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The summer heat is in full swing, so let's revisit why systems like district energy could be a sustainable way to heat and cool communities—ultimately working towards a zero carbon footprint. Jeff Westeinde, President of Zibi Canada and Founding Partner of Windmill Development Group joined thinkenergy to talk about how Zibi, which aims to be Canada's most sustainable development project, embraces district energy and One Planet Living. Relive this episode as part of thinkenergy's Summer Recharge!    Related links LinkedIn, Jeff Westeinde: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeff-westeinde-a46b4843/ LinkedIn, Windmill Development Group: https://www.linkedin.com/company/windmill-development-group/?originalSubdomain=ca Zibi: https://zibi.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   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, and my co host Rebecca Schwartz, as we explore both traditional and unconventional facets of the energy industry. Hey everyone, welcome to the summer rewind edition of the thinkenergy podcast. While we recharge our batteries during these lazy hazy days of summer, we're bringing back some blasts from our podcast past. We'll be reintroducing some of our most popular interviews that garnered a lot of attention and interest. There's been a lot of talk about the future electrification of energy on the path to net zero. The episodes we've selected are very future focused with themes around Green Innovation, renewable energy, and our impact on the environment. So I hope you enjoy the summer rewind edition of today's episode. In the meantime, have a happy summer. And we'll be back on August 15. To kick off another exciting season. Cheers. I'm Dan Seguin from Hydro Ottawa, and I'll be hosting the thinkenergy podcast. So here's today's big question. Are you looking to better understand the fast changing world of energy? Join me every two weeks and get a unique perspective from industry leaders as we deep dive and discuss some of the coolest trends, emerging technologies and latest innovations that drive the energy sector. So stay tuned as we explore some traditional and some quirky facets of this industry. This is the thinkenergy podcast.  Hey, everyone, welcome back. This is the ThinkEnergy podcast. What happens when you use a network of hot and cold water pipes, bury them underground and then use them to efficiently heat and cool buildings - even whole communities, you get something called 'district energy'. And it's not a new concept. A quick search will reveal that its origins can be traced back to the second century BC to the invention of the hypocaust heating systems that powered the hot water bath of the ancient Roman Empire. Famously a hot water distribution system in Chaudes-Aigues, in France, is regarded as the first real district heating system. It used geothermal energy to provide heat for about 30 houses in the 14th century, and the US Naval Academy in Annapolis began steam district heating in 1853. If you're like me, maybe you're wondering why modern civilization did not continue to use this efficient and environmentally sustainable technology more. There are some European countries such as Denmark, where district energy is mandated, but for the most part, it is largely gone the way of ancient Rome and public bathing. The latter is not such a bad thing in my mind, with more and more socially conscious citizens around the globe, district energy is once again seeing a surge in popularity and becoming a preferred method, thanks to its lower and energy efficient operating costs, reduced supply disruptions, and environmentally sound methods of heating and cooling buildings, municipalities and property owners are intrigued by this ancient alternative energy technology. So, here's today's big question: Is the world ready to embrace district energy as a viable means to power our communities? Is the nation's capital ready to have the first one planet zero carbon community district energy system in the country? Well, my guest today is the founding partner of the Thea partnership. One of Canada's most sustainable real estate development companies, as well as the president of Zibi Canada, which aims to be Canada's most sustainable development project. He's also an active investor and entrepreneur in both environmental, clean tech and real estate sector with active investments in solar energy, site remediation, and the beneficial reuse of waste. Dear listeners, please welcome Jeff Westeinde. Jeff, can we start by you telling us a bit about your background, the Zibi project and what drives your passion to build sustainable communities?   Jeff Westeinde  05:24 Well, so I guess my background, I always say I'm an entrepreneur. I'm an engineer by training, but entrepreneur by practice. So I've, I've had one, what I call real job in my career, I worked for a company for a little over a year, it quickly became apparent that I was unemployable. So I had to start my own business. And I've always been in the environmental sector. So I started I started my career as an environmental contractor cleaning up industrial messes and some of the wastes of the past. And as part of that, I would watch our clients the way they were cleaning up properties, and then what they would do to redevelop them. And I was pursuing trying to, you know, clean up the environment, make the planet a better place. And yet, so the practices we were using, were actually making it worse. We're trucking contaminated soils. You know, the time I lived in BC, we're picking up soil, putting it in a dump truck and hauling it across the Rocky Mountains into a landfill in Alberta. And nobody can tell me that's good for the environment. So very good. quickly decided that we shouldn't say very quickly but decided while I continue to move up the food chain, and start to buy contaminated properties and start to develop places and communities. And because we were purchasing contaminated properties, the commitment that we had was, let's do better than we've done before. So let's push the envelope about how can we live in a sustainable way? How can we ensure that what we're building today doesn't cause the problems that we're cleaning up on the very site for developing so that's maybe a bit of a background as to you know, why how I got into this and in my passion around, you know, leaving, like, I don't know if you're ever in the wilderness, but there's a rule, leave the campsite better than you found it. And I think that rule, that should be a planet wide rule, and it's historically as you know, as not being so.   Dan Seguin  07:12 Okay, Jeff, you're on the record saying that the way we build communities does not support health, happiness or the environment. What do you mean by that? And how does Zibi differentiate?   Jeff Westeinde  07:28 So, I might even be so bold as to say that, I would argue that most of our planning, especially in North America, is actually shortening the lifespan of our own citizens. And that's because we're so car reliant. We're so socially isolated in the way that we build. So think about a typical suburb. In a typical suburb, if you want to get up and, you know, go get a coffee, buy some milk, bring your kids to school, the very first thing you do is go hop in your car and drive. And that that leads to, you know, the stats that can predict the rate of diabetes, the rate of obesity, the rate of all sorts of other chronic diseases by the postal code you live in, was shocking. So, this car centric suburban lifestyle is not good for you. So that's the health side of it. The happiness side of it, I'll just point to one stat. And that's that you can use, there are statistics that say you can determine the level of happiness of somebody by how many of their neighbors they know by first name. Well, when you live in the suburbs, you know, you might know 2, 3, 4 neighbors, or those people whose kids are your age, or those guys you play hockey with, but you don't have the unexpected collisions as you're walking to the coffee shop or as you're bringing your kids to school. So again, that urban sprawl arguably leads to a lot of source of social isolation. And if something happens to an older person, you fall, you break a leg, even as a young person and you're inside your house. Similarly, you're not looking out your window and seeing people and waving at them and those types of things. So how we build our communities, I think is really important for health, happiness and obviously for environmental sustainability. And what we're doing at Zibi is making sure that you will not be car centric, that you do have these collisions with your neighbors. As you're walking around the neighborhood. We actually have social programming that, you know, we have snowshoe nights and that when Cirque du Soleil comes, we have a night that is just for the residents of Zibi that come, you know those kinds of things to make sure you feel like a part of that community.   Dan Seguin  09:49 How did you discover the one planet system? What can you tell us about it and your goal to build the first one in Canada?   Jeff Westeinde  10:00 Well, so we'll talk about how we discovered it first, and that's good. Myself and my business partners were behind the very first LEED Platinum buildings in Canada. So we built the first LEED Platinum building in BC, Alberta, Ontario, and in the country as a whole and the LEED Platinum building we built in Alberta - I was visiting one day A couple years after we'd built it, and LEED Platinum is literally the Platinum standard, the most sustainable in the lead system. And I watched one of the residents of his LEED Platinum condominium building drive a Hummer SUV into the parking garage, and said, you know, it's great that our building is sustainable, but we really have an impact and how the users are using the building and how they're, how they're living their lives. So we started scouring the planet, literally to say, Well, is there a system that would really impact not only how we build our buildings and how they operate at a point in time, but how do we engage the people, the users that are using those places? So one planet, we get rated on things like health and happiness and social engagement, along with all the other architectural and engineering features of a community. And the way one planet works: very simple. The name says it all we have to live as if we only have one planet. Most people when I say that look at me and sort of go, but we only do have one planet. And we need to remind them that if you live like a typical Canadian, you're using four planets of resources to sustain your unsustainable lifestyle, and Americans using five planets, Europeans using three planets, and all we're doing is stealing from future generations, and the developing world to sustain our unsustainable lifestyles. So one planet really is all about both environmental sustainability, like technical sustainability and social sustainability, with one planet worth of resources, and it's a very holistic program. Very audacious goals, we're going to talk about zero carbon. So as you know, Zibi is in the nation's capital in Ottawa and Gatineau. You know, we are we are today we're going to be at plus 34 degrees. Six months from now we'll be at minus 34 degrees Celsius and to be zero carbon in this environment. It's the Holy Grail. So achieving one planet is not an easy thing to do very audacious. But that's where we said, No, that's the bar we need to hit, we need to again, leave our campsite better than we came to it.   Dan Seguin  12:35 I was fascinated that this method, 'district energy' dates back, like I think is 3000 or 4000 years to the time of the Roman Empire. What are some of the key benefits of the energy system you're implementing in your community? And why has it taken this long for folks to embrace it with it's being around for so long?   Jeff Westeinde  13:01 Well, like most technological breakthroughs, it is not the technology itself or even the concept itself that gets in the way, its people. So regulators, you know, if you look at how our grid works, say in Ontario, you cannot run a district electrical system. I can't, I couldn't produce energy and give it to my neighbor. Because we have a regulatory body that says you can't do it. And there are good reasons for that it was around safety and security and all those types of things. But we've ended up with all of these barriers, that that would prohibit the transportation and sale of energy. And, you know, I talked about electricity. But what's very interesting at Zibi - our district energy system is just hot and cold water. And there are no regulations currently in Ontario and Quebec, around moving hot and cold water. So that allowed us to start a district energy system. Answer so yeah. Again, the reason I would say you don't see more of them is the regulatory hurdles to implement the district energy system are enormous. However, the benefits are huge. And I'll use a very, you know, high level example that if you were to have a, you know, a Shopify data center, a good Canadian company, unlike Amazon, as a for instance. That is in constant cooling. So it's rejecting heating all the time. Right? And beside it, you have the Nordic spa, another great company that always needs heating, but needs to therefore be rejecting cooling. When you put those two side by side, and they're swapping energy back and forth. So your load is so much less. That's the concept of District energy is that by sharing and you know, a commercial building has different loads than a residential building has different loads than a retail building. By sharing those loads, they have different peaks, either for peak shades, you'd be you have less capital expenditure and you're more efficient. Why is it taking so long? It drives me crazy, but I really do think it's regulation is the key item why.   Dan Seguin  15:13 Aside from regulation, what have been the challenges you encountered bringing this technology to market in Canada? The sight of your one planet community alone, straddling Ontario and Quebec, is really unique. Tell us about the challenges and how your passion has gotten you through.   Jeff Westeinde  15:34 Yeah, I'm not sure how long this podcast is, but I could talk for a week about the challenges. Yeah, as you talked about, we do span the provincial border between Ontario and Quebec. You know, we jokingly say, both sides have a different word for everything. Because one speaks French one speaks English. Even the rule of law is different to one side of the other the legal system. So, you know, we need to repeat everything twice when we do this, but what I'll tell you is, I would say that the way that we've overcome what are just an enormous amount of challenges, I won't even get into what they all are, but it was it was crazy. Boy, when we overcome it was we shared our vision. And actually, I would say was our community's vision of saying, this is where our region started. Arguably, this is where, you know, the roots of our country started was on this site. And when we when we purchased the property was a fenced off locked off contaminated former industrial site that nobody had seen unless you worked at domtar. For probably 100 years, people didn't realize there's a waterfall in the middle of the city. What the community talked about in the vision that we had was no, we need to do something truly world class like something that people would come to our region and say Quebecers Ontarians, Canadians, look at the communities and the places that they create. And with that vision of being world class, we were fortunate that that politicians in the region, federal, municipal and provincial, all endorsed out the community endorse it. So when we started to bump up against bureaucracy and regulations, we were able to remind everybody that our commitment or contract to all of our stakeholders was, we're going to do some world class. Now world class, meaning different, and bureaucracies and regulations exist to enforce the same. So we were able to say, listen, you've got to empower, talk to the politicians, you've got to empower the bureaucrats who are paid to make sure that everybody does everything the same, to say, No, we've got to look at this one differently. We're not looking to do anything unsafe or unreasonable. But there's a better way and we've got to find it. And it was really that vision of world class and the endorsement that we got from all of the public stakeholders who said, yeah, we want to be world class. We don't want to just build another suburb of the City of Ottawa or Gatineau.   Dan Seguin  18:08 Now through a marketing lens, how did you position this alternative energy system that provides heating and cooling to your communities' new housing projects? What was the value proposition for prospective buyers and investors.   Jeff Westeinde  18:25 I think the key one, one of the lessons we've learned about sustainability and building sustainable buildings and building sustainable communities, is, most consumers don't, you know, while it's a nice to have being sustainable, it's not something that they're making a purchasing decision around. That's changing. I think more and more people are starting to look at that, but historically hasn't been important. So the key to sustainability is, we need to, we're going to allow you to be much more environmentally sustainable, socially sustainable, without any impact to your lifestyle. So when it comes to district heating and cooling, we said, listen, we're going to deliver you zero carbon district heating and cooling at the same market cost as a carbon based system, and you won't know. If you know you're going to turn your heat on, it's going to get hot, you're going to turn up your cooling on it's going to get cool, and you're not going to pay any more of the market. So that was that batten marketing. I mean, that's a no brainer to everybody that Okay, hold on, I get the exact same as I would get in a carbon based system but I'm zero carbon or more sustainable. That's a pretty easy sell at that point.   Dan Seguin  19:33 Okay, now I'd like to explore design aspects. District energy equipment inside a building occupies about one fifth of the area of conventional systems that boilers and chillers take up. I'm assuming this provides more flexibility in designing your buildings and community. By eliminating traditional HVAC systems, what building design options did this enable you to expand on?   Jeff Westeinde  20:06 There's some easy ones like if you think about rooftop patios, as a for instance, you know, if you have a rooftop patio beside a big chiller that's making a bunch of noise is not a great rooftop. So by  being able to eliminate that equipment. You know, our rooftop patios are much nicer. But really as a place maker, as a developer, the key aspect for us was if you know if you take all of that mechanical and electrical distribution space, and you end up with instead real estate that you can use, it's another added benefit to saying that that district energy makes financial sense or can make financial sense. It wasn't easy to unlock that but can make financial sense. So, so yeah, it obviously the less constraints you have on a building, the more flexibility you have and district is one tool for that for sure.   Dan Seguin  21:06 Now, wondering if you could zero in on the energy distribution system that harnesses excess heat from the Kruger paper mill on the Ottawa River and the temporary thermal plant that was or is built to serve residents businesses in your community.   Jeff Westeinde  21:24 Sure, yeah. So are, you know, like talking about the benefits, or sorry, the rationale behind district that if you have different energy cycles between neighboring buildings, you can share that energy. Our district energy system is actually based on that very same principle that Kruger operates a tissue mill, directly across from Parliament Hill. They, it's a very efficient, very successful mill. But as part of that process, they bring in millions of litres of water a day, heated up to over 40 degrees Celsius. Use it several times in their papermaking process, but then discharge it into the Ottawa River at about 30 degrees Celsius, anywhere from 25 to 30. So what we're doing is saying listen, you're discharging the millions of liters of hot water into the Ottawa River. Why don't we strip that heat so then what we're doing is we're taking it from 25 to 30 degrees down to seven to 10 degrees and discharging out into the Ottawa. River in our heating system or in the heating season. So that's the concept behind it's very rudimentary engineering, it's strictly heat transfer between water. So, so pretty straightforward from that point of view. What the temporary plane that you speak about is our district energy system. That backbone heating system at Kruger is not yet built that's getting built this season. However, we have users in our buildings right now. So, we have temporary plants that are providing that but the infrastructure for the district the pipes in the streets and hot and cold water system is there. So those temporary plants are going to operate for about another year, after which will be on our permanent system.   Dan Seguin  23:06 In addition to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and improving energy resilience. Is it fair to say that district energy deliver economies of scale in areas with high population? What are some of the short and long term benefits for the owner and end user alike? And how do these factor into the government carbon reduction targets?   Jeff Westeinde  23:33 Well, yeah, so the short term is if you can be more efficient, so if you have dense populations with different energy cycles, so different peaks and whatnot, as we talked about earlier, you need to spend less capital because you're peaking is at a lower level. And you're sharing energy between so that your overall initial energy utilization from the grid or from the gas system is lower because you're sharing more so overall that drives efficiency. And at the end of the day efficiency then drives lower greenhouse gas emissions and ideally, lower and more stable costs because your energy inputs are a lower percentage of the overall district. So say in our case, you if we're harnessing heat from Kruger, there are no escalation in the cost of that heat. It is waste industrial heat that otherwise wouldn't go anywhere. Whereas if we're connected to the Ontario grid, as you know, you know, costs have escalated very significantly. So that energy input if that is our key input, our energy costs are going to be higher. So we're fortunate that again, the combination of we sit in Ontario and in Quebec, so we have two different electrical and two different gas grids. We have waste heat and our cooling is going to come largely from the Ottawa River. So we have low cost inputs with waste heat and Ottawa River cooling. And we have four different grids we can tap into for alternative and for other energy if need be. So that then allows us to control our costs. So again, just an example of how you can drive efficiency and provide more price stability, while at the same time reducing emissions.   Dan Seguin  25:22 Okay. Do alternative energy sources like district energy reduce exposure to fluctuating energy prices? How are the rates/cost determined for residents? Are they comparable to current rates? And are they stable?   Jeff Westeinde  25:41 Yeah, so, yes, not all district energy systems are the same. Obviously, it depends on what those inputs are. But in the case of the Zibi community utility, our district energy system, but then our key inputs are that waste industrial heat and cooling base from the Ottawa River, both of which obviously have are stable. There's there is no Yeah, well, I shouldn't say we have some commercial transactions that go on without but not like the grid that allows us to decrease our reliance on the grid for other inputs. So to answer the question on rates, yes, our rates are comparable to market. And we've actually indexed them to the price of Quebec hydroelectricity. And for anyone that understands electrical grids, I would suggest that in North America, Quebec is likely the most stable grid in all of North America. I would say that it is a national utility for the province of Quebec. And I would say, you know, all Canadians are very proud of our healthcare and if they ever tried to take it away, there'd be riots in the streets. I would suggest that if anybody tried to raise electrical rates in Quebec, similar to what's happened Ontario, there would be even bigger riots in the streets. So, you know, we are expecting that will allow us to provide really stable pricing over the long term to our, to our customers.   Dan Seguin  27:09 Now, how important was it to find a strategic partner like hydro Ottawa, that had more than 100 years of experience and a strong track record to create safe and reliable utility infrastructure?   Jeff Westeinde  27:24 The partnership with Hydro Ottawa was critical. And again, consumer acceptance of that of the district energy system. You know, if you think about reliability if you're a consumer at Zibi, and you said, Okay, well what happens if my heating or cooling goes off? Who do I call if I see, well, you know, I am Jeff and here's my cell phone, you know, call me up at the cottage and I'll see if I can help you. That's not exactly reassuring. When you say 'Well, you call Hydro Ottawa" and they will is not who I would normally, you know, they, they're, they're, you know, the relative reliability stats of Hydro Ottawa better than me, but it's 99.999 something percent uptime, you know, 24 hour response, etc., etc. So, being able to bring that credibility of a utility operator to our district was absolutely critical for overall consumer acceptance and I would even say regulatory acceptance. You know, when we started talking about listen we're going to be moving hot and cold water in the you know energy in the form of hot and cold water around the around our community all municipal officials provincially "Okay, let you know if they did you have experience with this?" when we say well, Hydro Ottawa is our partner, it is an automatic acceptance of all know, okay, you guys are credible we understand let's carry on. So having Hydro Ottawa as a partner has been truly exceptional for us to be able to pioneer this.   Dan Seguin  28:50 Jeff, in addition to district energy, what else is he planning to feature in terms of other advanced technology and innovation to achieve zero carbon living for the residents and tenants on site?   Jeff Westeinde  29:08 Yeah, again, I know your podcast is not that long so I could talk forever about this, but I'll give you some key examples. So you know, again, trying to decrease reliance on carbon based transportation systems. So you know, the personal vehicle. You know, having car sharing, having excellent access to transit, when you're looking at other things that have a carbon footprint, how we build our buildings, the components that go into our buildings, the materials that go into our buildings, some are very carbon intensive. So again, we're targeting those that aren't carbon intensive. Even things like if you look at logistics, you know, when you buy a head of lettuce at the at the grocery store, the carbon it took to get that lettuce to the grocery store is embedded in that very product. So having urban agriculture, you'll see urban gardens, we've got a couple on site now. So all sorts of areas where anywhere where we can target things that are that use carbon to get delivered to or to, as part of the system that we're in. We're looking at incrementally changing all of those things. And those increments when they add up, turn into some big numbers. So that's really our focus.   Dan Seguin  30:27 Jeff, how about we close off with some rapid fire questions? Are you ready to go? What is your favorite word?   Jeff Westeinde  30:36 Serendipity. Yeah, I love serendipity. Because good things happen when you're not paying attention.   Dan Seguin  30:42 What is one thing you can't live without?   Jeff Westeinde  30:46 That was an easy one, my wife, I could be dead without that!   Dan Seguin  30:52 What is something that challenges you?   Jeff Westeinde  30:54 The word "No." I'm not good at taking the word 'No', it's how Zibi exists.   Dan Seguin  31:00 If you could have one superpower, what would it be?   Jeff Westeinde  31:03 I'd love to be a shapeshifter, be able to get inside different systems, different beings and understand how and why they work. I have endless curiosity. So I think being a shapeshifter would be amazing.   Dan Seguin  31:15 If you had to turn back time and talk to your 18 year old self, what would you tell them?   Jeff Westeinde  31:21 First, I would say smarten up and stop doing dumb things. But no, I think the one thing I would say is listen, relax. You know, something that has come to ring true with me, the Roman philosopher Seneca said, you know, "luck happens when opportunity meets preparedness". And I've been very fortunate to be lucky. But there's only one thing I can control in there. I can't control luck, I can't control opportunity. All I can do is control preparedness. So get prepared and just relax, pay attention, good things will happen.   Dan Seguin  31:52 And lastly, what do you currently find most interesting in your sector?   Jeff Westeinde  31:57 I love the fact that public health - so right now, you know, as you know, we're in the middle of a covid pandemic - public health is leading that across our country. But here in Ottawa, it's Vera Etches, I love the fact that our public health officials are starting to be included in our urban planning policies. So in Ottawa, Vera Etches participated in that. So remember I said earlier, you know, the way we plan is shortening the lifespan of our citizens. Public health starting to get involved in that. I'm really hoping that there will be an influence where they'll say, "if we planned communities this way, then here are the health benefits of it. If we do it that way, here's the health benefits." That's not currently happening. So I find that really exciting.   So, you know, we've been talking mostly about the Zibi project, which is one of the many things I do you know, if you go to Zibi.ca, then you can find more about Zibi and if you look to hello@zibi.ca anybody that wants to connect they're very good at getting people to me. I'm not much of a social media person, I do have a LinkedIn profile. I don't use it very often. But you can find me on LinkedIn and I'm good at responding to messages there as well.   Dan Seguin  32:41 Well, Jeff, we've reached the end of another episode of The ThinkEnergy podcast, last question for you. How can our listeners learn more about you and Zibi? How can they better connect?  Again, thank you so much for joining me today. I hope you had a lot of fun.   Jeff Westeinde  33:35 Well, this was fun, Dan, and thank you for your interest in Zibi and One Planet. That's fantastic.   Dan Seguin  33:42 Thank you for joining us today. I truly hope you enjoyed this episode of The thinkenergy podcast. For past episodes, make sure you visit our website HydroOttawa.com/podcast. Lastly, if you found value in this podcast, be sure to subscribe. Cheers, everyone.

In order to achieve Canada's goal of being net zero by 2050, the future of energy will need to look a lot different than it does today. Vince Brescia, President and CEO of the Ontario Energy Association shared how controlling our emissions is a large part of the process, taking into account affordability and reliability of the energy supply, and six recommendations outlined by the Ontario Energy Association in a recent report. Relive this episode as part of thinkenergy's Summer Recharge!    Related links Vince Brescia, LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vincebrescia/ Ontario Energy Association, LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ontario-energy-association https://energyontario.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   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, and my co host Rebecca Schwartz, as we explore both traditional and unconventional facets of the energy industry. Hey everyone, welcome to the summer rewind edition of the thinkenergy podcast. While we recharge our batteries during these lazy hazy days of summer, we're bringing back some blasts from our podcast past. We'll be reintroducing some of our most popular interviews that garnered a lot of attention and interest. There's been a lot of talk about the future electrification of energy on the path to net zero. The episodes we've selected are very future focused with themes around Green Innovation, renewable energy, and our impact on the environment. So I hope you enjoy the summer rewind edition of today's episode. In the meantime, have a happy summer. And we'll be back on August 15. To kick off another exciting season. Cheers. Dan Seguin  00:02 Hey, everyone, I'm Dan Seguin.   Rebecca Schwartz  00:04 And I'm Rebecca Schwartz, both from Hydro Ottawa.   Dan Seguin  00:07 And we'll be hosting the ThinkEnergy podcast. So are you looking to better understand the fast changing world of energy? Every two weeks, Rebecca and I will be taking you on a tour and discuss some of the coolest trends, emerging technologies, and latest innovations within the energy sector   Rebecca Schwartz  00:26 We'll be engaging in great conversations with game changers, thought leaders and industry leaders who welcome the opportunity to share their expertise and views with you, our listeners.   Dan Seguin  00:37 So stay tuned as we explore some traditional and some quirky facets of this industry.   Rebecca Schwartz  00:43 This is the ThinkEnergy podcast.   Dan Seguin  00:50 Hey, everyone, welcome back. This is the ThinkEnergy podcast and I'm Dan Seguin.   Rebecca Schwartz  00:55 And I'm Rebecca Schwartz. In November 2020, the Government of Canada introduced a bill setting the stage to achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Dan, how old will you be in 2050?   Dan Seguin  01:08 I don't know, Rebecca, you have to ask me then, when I wake up from my cryogenically frozen state along with Walt Disney, that's the plan.   Rebecca Schwartz  01:17 Okay, good to know   Dan Seguin  01:19 When you try and wrap your head around what it will take to get Canada to net zero by 2050, do you wonder what kind of energy transformation that will entail?   Rebecca Schwartz  01:30 I'm still thinking about what you said about being cryogenically frozen. But yes, I think it's going to be a massive undertaking and necessary one. Ontario currently produces 163 megatons of greenhouse gas emissions. And 76% of that is from emissions stemming from energy use.   Dan Seguin  01:51 Right. But when we talk about energy, we're not talking about electricity. We're talking about refined petroleum, primarily used for transportation and natural gas to heat our homes and buildings.   Rebecca Schwartz  02:05 That's right. Those two sectors, transportation and buildings make up 76% of the provinces greenhouse gas emissions, however, the electricity sector makes up only 16%. So here's today's big question. What are the keys to net zero success?   Dan Seguin  02:23 It's interesting, because, as you know, despite what the electricity sector in Ontario has achieved in terms of renewable energy, and curbing its greenhouse gas emissions, the conversation almost always still revolves around the electricity sector when it comes to climate change. Which brings us to today's show.   Rebecca Schwartz  02:45 Recently, the Ontario Energy Association released a white paper that reviewed various elements of the provinces energy system and the options available to achieve zero emissions by 2050.   Dan Seguin  02:57 Our guest today is Vince Brescia, President and CEO of the Ontario Energy Association.   Rebecca Schwartz  03:07 Vince, welcome to the show. Perhaps you can start us off by telling us a little bit about yourself and what the Ontario Energy Association does.   Vince Brescia  03:15 Thanks, Rebecca, and thanks for having me on the show. I'm the president and CEO of the Ontario Energy Association. I've been active in public policy work and research since the late 1980s, I guess, inside the government and in various capacities outside of the government, then I've been here at the OEA for the last five years and really enjoying it. Here's of who the OEA is we represent the the breadth of Ontario's energy industry. We have power producers of all the different fuel types, you know, whether that's nuclear, hydro, wind, solar, etc. We have demand response and storage. We have the large electricity distributors representing 75% of Ontario's customer base. We also have the natural gas distributors representing over 99% of Ontario's customers in terms of what we do the OEA conducts Public Policy Research and advocates on behalf of its members. And we also provide forums for education on Energy and Environment issues. So that's a quick snapshot of me and the OEA   Dan Seguin  04:27 Now Vince with respect to the government of Canada's goal to reach net zero emissions by 2050. What is the role of the Ontario Energy Association in this initiative?   Vince Brescia  04:40 Thanks. Yeah, reaching net zero by 2050 will be a massive undertaking, perhaps the largest infrastructure projects in our country's history. So our role at the OEA is going to be to leverage the expertise of our members and advise governments at all levels about how we can make this transition happen. while still maintaining the affordability and reliability of our energy supply, it's going to be a big challenge. And we're all going to need to work together to achieve this goal.   Rebecca Schwartz  05:08 So what kinds of major transformation will it take to achieve the government's goals?   Vince Brescia  05:14 I'll break it down in a couple of different ways. In Ontario, 76% of our emissions come from the energy we use. So reaching our goals will require a major transformation of our energy system. 23% of those emissions come from industrial processes and product use 10% of agriculture, percent based so that gives you the full spectrum of the emissions in Ontario. But because we're an Energy Association, we've focused on the energy component and the transformation required in the energy system. Or there are some overlaps. For example, we're hopeful some of those waste emissions can be turned into energy just as an example. But then turning to energy. Currently in Ontario 80% of the energy we use comes from fossil fuel sources. 48% is from petroleum primarily for transportation uses. Another 28% is from natural gas primarily to heat our homes and buildings. 16% comes from electricity, which is now a clean energy source. So altogether, achieving our goal is going to require us to transform 80% of our energy system. That's a big project. And the three big sources of emissions in Ontario are transportation, buildings and industry. Altogether, those account for almost 80% of our emissions. So we're going to have to swap up the fuels that we use in transportation, we're going to need to decarbonize our building heating systems. And many of our industries and businesses are going to have to adapt to new fuel sources. This gives you a sense of the scale of the challenge. But also with comes that comes with that is a large opportunity of the to go to go hand in hand.   Dan Seguin  06:56 2015 is 30 years away. But it's fair to say that Ontario's emissions have changed a lot in the past 30 years. Vince, can you give us a snapshot of how our energy use has changed since 1990. What sectors and provinces have improved the most?   Vince Brescia  07:16 In 2019. Just to give you a sense of where we're at Canada emitted 730 mega tons of ghgs of that Ontario represented 163 mega tons or 22% of the national total. Over time since 1990, Ontario's emissions have declined from 180 megatons to 163, which is a reduction of about 17 megatons or 9%. We still have another 19 megatons to go to meet our 2030 target of 30% below 2005 levels. That's not factoring in the recent national commitment by our Prime Minister to reduce emissions by 40 to 45%. By 2030. In terms of you asked about how you know how the provinces have, have compared and fared nationally, Ontario has made the largest largest progress nationally. That came primarily from the elimination of coal fired generation in the province. That one policy change resulted in a 31 mega ton reduction reduction in emissions from its peak in 2005. However, a lot of those emissions reductions in Ontario have been offset by increases in emissions from our transportation sector since 1990. Nationally, to give you a sense of how other provinces have done, you know, to the east of Ontario, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Quebec together, have reduced emissions by 19 megatons in total since 2005. However, west of Ontario, the emissions profile has been rising. So altogether, nationally, our emissions have been flat since 2005. And if you look back to 1991, they're up from the 600 megatons to the 730 we're at now.   Rebecca Schwartz  08:57 Vince, the Ontario Energy Association outlines six recommendations in the report, can you walk us through what those are at a high level and why you believe they're the keys to netzero success,   Vince Brescia  09:09 I'll do a quick walk through. Our first recommendation is that we need to move as quickly as we can on transportation fuel switching. And that's because we have almost all of the technologies we need to affordably transform the sector and because transportation is our largest source of emissions. So that's what we need to tackle first, and we can do it affordably. Second is we need to start reducing emissions in our natural gas system is our second largest source of emissions. And if we get time later, we can talk a bit about some of the things we can do in that area. The third thing we're going to need to do is to plan to expand our electricity system, all this fuel switching. I've been talking about like for example in transportation, and we're going to need it in industry as well. We're going to need a lot more electricity and we're going to need every type of resource. We're going to need nuclear, hydro, wind, solar storage demand response transmission, you name it, we're going to need the whole package to meet the amount of electricity that's needed. Some people talk about a doubling or tripling of our electricity. Some, we're gonna need a lot more electricity as we transform our economy. The fourth thing that we recommended is that we start to accelerate accelerate hydrogen programs and pilots, we're gonna need a lot of hydrogen in our future, because there's certain types of industrial processes and activities, where it's not so easy to swap out the fossil fuels that we use. And hydrogen seems like a highly likely candidate, or hydrogen based fuels. But we have a bit of work to do to develop those and make them affordable for customers. So we need governments to lean in and help with pilot projects, and put their thumb on the scale, so to speak, to accelerate this economy and help build the infrastructure that we need to service the economy. Fifth recommendation we made is that there be comprehensive energy planning, not just electricity policy. In Ontario, we have tended to have a history of focusing just on the electricity system. And you've heard me mentioned earlier, it currently only accounts for 16% of our total energy use. We now now need to think about our whole energy system holistically. And make a detailed plan about what it's going to cost, what the most likely pathways are. The final recommendation is that we're going to need federal, provincial and municipal coordination. All three levels of governments are active in the space, all are having an impact and can have an impact. But we're not going to be successful if they're not coordinating their efforts, or if they're working at cross purposes, or fighting each other's or turning issues into political wedges, you know, against each other. We need to all work together because you know, as I mentioned earlier, this is a massive undertaking. And if we're going to be successful, we all need to work together in coordination. So that's a quick summary of our recommendations.   Dan Seguin  12:11 You note that in order for the transition to be successful in Ontario, careful attention needs to be paid to three core pillars that are the underpinning of the energy system. What are those?   Vince Brescia  12:24 Yeah, thanks for asking. Now we know from from experience that are three critical pillars that underpin public support for our energy system. The first is sustainability, which encompasses the net zero discussion we are having today. our energy system must be sustainable over the long term, and that includes ensuring that we utilize energy in a way that ensures the environmental sustainability of our communities, and of our planet. Of course, the two other pillars, though, are affordability, and reliability. We have recent experience in Ontario that significant increases in energy costs lead to very negative customer and voter reactions. We must keep our customers informed and supportive of the transition, or they will rebel against the effort. Finally, our modern economy is also very dependent upon reliable energy. customers expect and depend on energy being available when they need it. If we go too long, without energy to heat our homes or power to run our economy, or God forbid, keep our cell phones charged. It causes major disruption for all of us. So our transition must ensure we continue to provide an energy in the reliable fashion that our consumers have grown accustomed to,   Rebecca Schwartz  13:36 In your opinion, Vince, what are some of the biggest barriers and challenges to achieve the 2015 zero emission targets? For instance, are there any activities that we can't fully eliminate?   Vince Brescia  13:47 Yes, some of the biggest barriers and challenges to achieving our goals will come from what some call the hard to abate sectors. These sectors are characterized by high material volumes, and finding alternative processes that are affordable, it's going to be a challenge for us. These are also some of our largest sources of emissions globally. And the big three are cement, steel and chemicals. Cement is one of the largest sources of global emission each tonne of cement produces about a half a tonne of carbon dioxide. And this has two main components. One is from the chemical reaction of turning limestone, which is calcium carbonate, and to lime, which releases co2. The other is from the energy component that we use to cook the limestone to over 1000 degrees Celsius, which is typically fossil fuels. So you have two elements, you have both an energy element and a chemical element that leads to large emissions from that sector. And that's going to be a challenge to decarbonize that sector. Steel is another one steel is the highest emitting industry in the world. It produces 3.5 Giga tons of co2 globally. Like cement, they're both energy In process admissions, we make primary steel out of iron ore, which is iron oxide, we add coal to the iron ore for its heat energy to essentially boil the you're kind of like we did we do for the cement, and for its chemical properties that allow us to strip off the oxygen atoms. This results in a chemical process where you end up with pure iron and co2 emissions. We produce steel in Ontario. And we also produce a lot of cars, which use a lot of steel and steel and a lot of other processes. So we're Ontario is going to have to tackle this one head on and it's going to be a challenge. The third big challenging areas, chemicals, petrochemicals and plastic production are the other large area of emissions globally and Ontario. There's a more diverse range of products here, but the largest one is ammonia, which we use for fertilizer in agriculture. And the next are ethylene and propylene, which are the most important ingredients and plastics. Again, there's going to be some difficulties and challenges and a lot of technology required to decarbonize those sectors.   Rebecca Schwartz  16:07 Let's talk about opportunities and leveraging technology and innovation. What's exciting you or giving you hope for the future?   Vince Brescia  16:14 There are some activities, we're going to need a lot of Innovation and Learning before we'll be able to eliminate emissions. According to the International Energy Agency, almost half the emissions cuts necessary for us to achieve net zero will come from technologies that are not in the marketplace yet. Some of the more exciting areas that are important and looked like they have significant potential, I would say are the following three hydrogen and hydrogen based fuels. governments around the world are developing hydrogen strategies. It looks to be very competitive globally, every major western country is working on a hydrogen strategy. And Ontario in Canada have some leading companies in this area like we have Enbridge Cummins hydrogenics, new flyer Ballard loop energy, planetary hydrogen, hydro energy, it's going to be a very exciting area is watching the hydrogen economy develop. That's what I'm excited about. The other one is energy storage, particularly long duration energy storage. We store lots of energy, now we have the technology. The costs are coming down fast. But what's really going to help us transform our economy is the ability to store energy for a long period of times and learn to do that affordably. There's lots of people looking at that and working on it, it's going to be a significant growth area. And I'm very excited about it. The third big one is is carbon capture utilization and storage, we are absolutely going to need carbon capture and storage if we're going to meet our netzero goals. One of the examples is cement, which I talked about earlier, I talked about this process where we boil the limestone and the chemical reaction leads to a bunch of emissions. The only thing I'm really hearing about from experts who know a lot more about this stuff than I do is that we're gonna need carbon capture to capture the carbon dioxide that comes from that cement. And cement. You know, as I mentioned, it's a very large global emissions producers. And that's just one example. There are lots of places where we're going to need carbon capture in our future to meet our goals. So there's a there's there's three areas that I'm excited about where I think we're going to see a lot of growth.   Dan Seguin  18:21 How important is energy affordability for Ontarians?   Vince Brescia  18:26 It's critically important. History has shown us that Ontarians react negatively to energy cost increase. If the government's Transition Plans a significant negative impact on energy and affordability. Families and businesses will rebel against the plan and the plan will get derailed. Oh, it is critically important. We have to keep it in mind.   Dan Seguin  18:45 What lessons can be learned from when Ontario's electricity rates increase to pay for renewable investments? And how can these lessons be applied to Canada's goal for 2050?   Vince Brescia  18:59 It's a great question. I'll give you my perspective. I think one important lesson we can learn from that experience is that sudden large spikes in energy costs are very upsetting to people and they draw lots of attention. They draw lots of political attention, lots of media attention. I think you can socialize the idea that costs may have to arise incrementally over time and get people used to the idea. However, most households don't pay much attention to public policy discussions and debates. They just look at their bill. They compare their last bill to this one, or this month's bill compared to this month last year to see how it's doing. So whatever plan we develop, if we can avoid sudden spikes, I think you can invoke you can avoid the negative public reactions, like the one we saw. That's what we can learn from that previous experience.   Rebecca Schwartz  19:47 Ontario's electricity system is one of the cleanest in the world. What does removing natural gas from the provinces supply mean for the reliability of the grid?   Vince Brescia  19:58 It's a great question. It's one that's getting discussed more. In the current climate, Ontario's Nash natural gas plants were built only recently to replace the reliability service offered by the coal plants we were shutting down. Once we had the capabilities of these natural gas plants in place, we were able to add a large volume of renewables to our system, resulting Ontario having one of the cleanest electricity systems in the world. These gas plants are like a backup to our electricity system. Most of the time the plants are not utilized much while we power the system with you know, nuclear, hydro, wind and solar and other other sources. That's why our system is so clean currently, because the plants are set seldom run at full capacity, so we get fewer emissions from them. However, when we have a large spike in demand on a really cool day, or a really hot day, these plants kick in to help maintain system reliability. They can be deployed on relatively short notice to meet urgent needs. Like the coal plants that they replace, these plants have access to something that is critically important for grid reliability, vast amounts of energy storage, this capability is not easy or affordable to replace. So we're going to need the services of these plants for some time before we're going to be able to replace them,   Rebecca Schwartz  21:12 can we replace natural gas to heat our homes and buildings and what will it take to make it happen? Vince,   Vince Brescia  21:19 we are going to need to maintain our gases to heat our homes and buildings for some time, we can change what goes into the system to make it cleaner and we can reduce the amount of energy we need from the system. I'll try and put it into perspective for you. The natural gas system currently provides about three times the peak energy of our electricity system. In other words, we would need to quadruple our current electricity system to meet the current peak heat demand if we wanted to transition to electric heat across Ontario. To give you a sense of the scale of that, if we were going to replace all of the gas system with electricity that would require about 24 nuclear generating stations. Or it would take 30 to 50,000 wind turbines paired with long duration energy storage, acquiring about 1.3 million acres for siting, you get a sense that this would be a pretty massive undertaking, and would probably be very expensive for customers. At the same time, we are going to have to expand our electricity system to deal with significant electrification and transportation, which we've talked about, and an industry which we've also talked about. So if we were to add the electrification of the natural gas system on top of that, that would likely not be achievable. So this informs the view that we should be looking at ways to decarbonize the natural gas system. And we're doing that now. Firstly, we've begun to blend renewable natural gas into our system, which takes methane from waste that was otherwise go into the atmosphere. Methane is a very potent greenhouse gas, making this a carbon negative activity. We're also blending green emissions free hydrogen into our gas system. Going forward, we'll be continuously exploring technological advances that allow us to increase the amount of that blend of hydrogen and renewable natural gas into our system. In addition, if we were to pair our current heating system with heat pumps, we can make a significant reduction in the amount of natural gas needed to heat our homes and buildings. On top of all of that, you know, research has shown us that we can affordably achieve significant reductions in the amount of natural gas use through building energy efficiency measures. So when you put all of those things together, you know, our view is that we can deeply decarbonize the natural gas system, and do that relatively affordability which reduces the scale relatively affordably as well and it reduces the scale of the electricity expansion that is going to be required. In Ontario for all these other activities we've talked about.   Dan Seguin  23:52 As we know from your report, refined petroleum makes up 48% of Ontario's energy use mostly for transportation. Are electric vehicles the answer to the transportation sectors greenhouse gas emissions problem here in Ontario.   Vince Brescia  24:10 Yes, they are a large part of the answer. Transportation as you mentioned, it's Ontario's largest source of emissions. passenger vehicles currently make up 57% of our transportation emissions, electric electrification of these passenger vehicles and a smaller short haul trucks and transit uses this can be done affordably with current technology, very exciting. I expect this transition to really accelerate and the next while for heavier and long haul transportation, we may need other solutions to be part of the mix. Long Haul and heavy transportation is less amenable to electrification because the batteries get too big and heavy and refueling time, you know adds significantly to cost for these uses. You know, we could be looking at learning compressed natural gas and renewable natural gas to to get to net zero most analysts seem to think that hydrogen fuel cells will be an important part of the long term substitution for heavy transportation. exciting part, as I've mentioned, we have a number of leading hydrogen companies in Canada and Ontario that are, that are making these these fuel cells. So it's also an economic opportunity for our province. And also, you know, you think of the materials for batteries and some of the the steel and inputs to the these vehicles that we're talking about, there's another economic opportunity there for Ontario. For some other transportations like ships and planes, we're just going to need alternative fuels. And again, the batteries be too heavy, you need a high energy density of the fuel. And we have, we may be looking at variants on hydrogen fuels like ammonia, that are very, very dense in energy in order to the fuel all those activities. And what we're going to do to try and figure out as a way to develop those supply chains affordably to set out those users.   Rebecca Schwartz  26:04 Alright, then, how about we close off with some rapid fire questions?   Vince Brescia  26:08 All right,   Rebecca Schwartz  26:09 what is your favorite word?   Vince Brescia  26:11 Reason   Rebecca Schwartz  26:12 What is one thing you can't live without?   Vince Brescia  26:14 Air And Starbucks coffee.   Rebecca Schwartz  26:17 What is something that challenges you?   Vince Brescia  26:19 golf. I keep trying, but it keeps challenging me.   Rebecca Schwartz  26:22 If you could have one superpower events, what would it be?   Vince Brescia  26:26 Time Travel   Rebecca Schwartz  26:27 If you could turn back time and talk to your 18 year old self? What would you tell him?   Vince Brescia  26:32 Oh, with my new superpower, I'd say invest all your savings and Berkshire Hathaway and leave it there.   Rebecca Schwartz  26:38 And lastly, what do you currently find most interesting in your sector?   Vince Brescia  26:42 You know what I love the technological innovation that is taking place in our sector. I mean, we've been talking about it today. It's exciting. It's a very exciting time to be part of the sector. I'm learning every day about new technologies and processes. And I love it.   Dan Seguin  26:59 Well, Vince, we've reached the end of another episode of The think energy podcast. Thank you so much for joining us today. I hope you had a lot of fun.   Vince Brescia  27:08 I did have a lot of fun. Thank you so much for having me. This was great.   Dan Seguin  27:13 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.

According to a survey conducted by Electricity Human Resources Canada, 48% of employees believe they increased productivity when working remotely. With that in mind, it's no surprise to see many industries adopting a hybrid model where employees have flexibility around where they work—and why prospective employees are looking beyond salary when determining what's important to them in a job. Michelle Branigan, CEO of Electricity Human Resources Canada, joins us to discuss how remote working will affect the energy sector's workplace and workforce future.    Related links LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michelle-branigan-6055bb21/ https://electricityhr.ca/ https://electricityhr.ca/workplace-solutions/diversity-inclusion/illuminate-opportunity/illuminate-opportunity-endnotes/ --- To subscribe using Apple Podcasts:  https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/thinkenergy/id1465129405   To subscribe using Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7wFz7rdR8Gq3f2WOafjxpl   To subscribe on Libsyn: http://thinkenergy.libsyn.com/ --- Subscribe so you don't miss a video: https://www.youtube.com/user/hydroottawalimited   Check out our cool pics on https://www.instagram.com/hydroottawa   More to Learn on https://www.facebook.com/HydroOttawa   Keep up with the Tweets at https://twitter.com/thinkenergypod Transcript: Dan Seguin  00:06 This is thinkenergy, the podcast that helps you better understand the fast changing world of energy through conversations with game changers, industry leaders, and influencers. So join me, Dan Seguin, and my co-host, Rebecca Schwartz, as we explore both traditional and unconventional facets of the energy industry. Hey, everyone, welcome back, has COVID-19 forever changed the way we think, perform and show up for work? There's been a huge workplace culture shift with more employees working remotely. Commuting has been possible for many years. But I think it's fair to say that there was reluctance on the part of many employers to implement digital solutions, such as video conferencing, digital sharing tools, and expansion of cloud based computing to facilitate the shift away from the office. Rebecca, did you know that, according to McKinsey and Company, COVID-19 accelerated three trends that may well last after the pandemic is over?   Rebecca Schwartz  01:21 Yeah. So the first and probably the most talked about trend is the hybrid remote work. Now, there's about 20 to 25% of computer based workers who could foreseeably work from home something like two to three days a week. That's almost five times the number of workers who were doing remote work before the pandemic. Second, not only have we become accustomed to the comforts of work from home, but we've also become accustomed to the convenience of home delivery. And I say this only based on all those Amazon packages that arrive at my door. Myself and others like me have probably contributed significantly to the growth of E-commerce and the delivery economy during the pandemic. It's just become so easy. And finally, companies are enlisting automation and AI to cope with COVID-19, and any other future disruptions. This could mean putting robots in manufacturing plants and warehouses and adding self service customer kiosks and service robots in stores.   Dan Seguin  02:23 And we haven't even touched on the great resignation of 2021. According to NPR, 33 million Americans quit their jobs since the spring of 2021. Is it about better pay, treatment, flexibility or perks? Or is it about something more like reevaluating what success, happiness and work life balance means?   Rebecca Schwartz  02:53 One thing is for sure, Dan, the pandemic has ushered in a new era that's changing the workplace and the workforce for the future, and the electricity sector is not immune.   Dan Seguin  03:03 So, here's today's big question. Can the energy sector reimagine where and how work is done to increase rescaling efforts? And is the sector looking beyond the pandemic to reimagine how and where work is done?   Rebecca Schwartz  03:23 To answer these questions, we have Michelle Branigan, the CEO of Electricity Human Resources Canada joining us on the program, also known as EHRC. It is the leading source of HR information for Canada's electricity industry. Michelle, thank you for joining us again on the show.   Dan Seguin  03:41 Michelle, since the pandemic and this new hybrid world of work, what changes in the approach have you observed from energy HR leaders?   Michelle Branigan  03:53 Hi, Dan. Well, um, I would say that the work life balance discussion has been reignited, and research is showing us that many employees, current and or future will have expectations that they can work at home at least part of the week. So that has implications of course, not just on the business side; you know, think about real estate and office footprint, but on corporate culture, so employee engagement, productivity performance management. The HRC has actually conducted a number of pulse surveys over the last two years with both employers and employees. And we hold regional roundtables across the country on an ongoing basis. And I think the single biggest learning is the recognition that a hybrid work model can work without jeopardizing productivity, because that, of course, was a concern at the start of the pandemic. And that's a fair one, right? Safety is always going to be paramount for electricity; employers spread into the culture of the industry, but at the same time, the work actually has to get done. And so it's a balancing act for today's leaders. You need to make sure that you're achieving your organization's business objectives, while still taking care of employees physical and mental health. When we actually spoke to surveyed employees last year we heard that are over a little over 45% believe that they had the same level of productivity when working remotely; 48% actually said they had an increased level of productivity. And only 6% said they were less productive. But, employers who are concerned about productivity, need to make sure that their staff have the equipment, the processes, the supports, in place to do their job well, and then managers are going to need to take a more non traditional approach to understanding productivity and how you actually measure it. So that was probably the number one thing. And then I think secondly, the pandemic has really accelerated all discussion about the future of work right? Worldwide, and in our industry, of course. This is something that really is top of mind .Employees have been very vocal in expressing that they do not want to return to the same way of working as pre pandemic. It's actually the preference of many in the workforce to continue to work remotely. And that's going to pose challenges and opportunities for HR leaders over the coming years. And then just finally, very quickly, what I would say is that this is probably a little bit less about approach and more about recognition that human resources has become an essential voice, alongside, you know, operations, finance, and you know, the other core units and responding to the challenges of the pandemic and how we work as an organization going forward as a sector. All business units have had to adapt over the last couple of years. But the pandemic has shown that human resources, or HR really is a key function in every business. For years, HR professionals have reiterated the importance of managing and recognizing HR as a strategic business partner, not always with success. And I think that has drastically changed.   Dan Seguin  07:10 So true, Michelle. Now, has the pandemic, and remote working taught us anything about our workforce?   Michelle Branigan  07:20 Yes, just to pick up on that second point, people want more work life balance, it's incredibly important to them, right. Many have mentioned increased productivity as a positive result of working remotely, but even more spoke to having more time back in their life to do the things that they enjoy. They don't want to spend time in traffic that could be spent, you know, walking the dog or going to the gym, picking the kids up earlier from school is a huge thing. So even more than salary, time continues to be the most valued commodity if you want to think of it like that. But at the same time, not everyone wants to work from home all the time. So you know, there's a different side to that whole conversation. And there are other challenges. A number of people that we spoke to reported feelings of isolation, difficulty with communications with their colleagues; with their peers, and, or, an increased or extended workload. And I think a lot of us would recognize that, you know, it's very easy for a lot of people to continue working outside normal work hours, especially during those lockdowns that we had right? There wasn't much else to do. When your laptop was at the dining room table, there's a tendency to continue checking and responding to those emails. So those lines got blurred. And that's not necessarily a good thing. Now, that might change more as we come out of the pandemic, and people have, you know, get back to their lives and have different things to do. But a lot of people don't have the luxury of a separate office or a quiet space to work in. So, again, that isolation piece, people mentioned that to us and the mental health toll that comes with that. So, you know, as we move into this new world, this, I don't think there's going to be a one size fits all approach. I think collaboration, communication, productivity, they're all elements that are going to have to be considered by individual employees, as well as culture and employee morale. So, whatever work model you choose, as an employer, engaging all levels of employees and talking to them about why you're choosing one model over another- I think that's incredibly important because it will really help to increase buy in around that, you know, the opportunity to, you know, that could be things like the opportunity to collaborate knowledge sharing, mentorship, that type of thing, but just really make sure to communicate with your audience. And so they know why you're making that decision.   Rebecca Schwartz  10:03 Okay, so, you kind of touched on this, how my one sized approach does not work. So what are some of the challenges and opportunities that flexible working presents to the electricity sector?   Michelle Branigan  10:14 Well, many of our employers have committed to implementing a hybrid model for their office workforce in some shape, way or form, this is a huge change, because it's now becoming almost a de facto scenario, where many, many, not all, but many organizations are looking to do this on a go forward basis. And that was pretty unheard of pre pandemic. One of the more common scenarios I've heard today, this or that three days in the office, two days a whole model or two, three, but not everybody's going to find that that works for their business, there may be a challenge down the line from a recruitment and retention standpoint, as some individuals do not want to come back to the office at all. Again, there's no one size fits all, some companies want to go completely virtual. I've talked to a few, not very many who want everybody back in the office full time, I really think the sweet spot is in the model. It is the hybrid piece. Again, you know, we asked employees about the challenges when working remotely. Almost half of them 45% said there was no challenges at all to working remotely. But a quarter of our respondents said that their top challenge was the loss of collaboration with the colleagues, right? And then there was other challenges. Again, not having a defined workspace, not everybody has the office, IT challenges, internet, Wi Fi, those sorts of things, interruptions, and loneliness. I thought that was very, you know, that's very telling, when people are talking to you about some of those things that are on the list. Why do people like working remotely, why is a hybrid work model and that opportunity to be autonomous, important? 83% talks about commute, people do not like to spending time commuting. Better work life, balance, time flexibility, more time out of work. Some people actually even prefer working on their own right. So there's all these different things in the mix. And at the time, when this big experiment was actually going on, you have to remember that kids were doing school from home, people were trying to- everybody was in a house, either in a house with too many people or maybe isolated on their own. When people are actually working remotely without the pandemic, it's going to be a little bit different people may even prefer it a little bit more. And then one of the other things that I think is important in the electricity sector, and this gets lost sometimes is that a large percentage of our workforce doesn't work in an office. Right? They work in the field. So our PLT's, our arborists, excetera. So how do you work with that? Hybrid models can be possible for field staff, but it really depends on their specific work. And, you know, how you can accommodate that. During the pandemic, we did see some innovation; companies did make some changes. So for example, people who had their own individual work vehicles were allowed to take them home. So they didn't have to go to the office every day to pick up the work truck. They only had to come into the office now and again to pick up supplies instead of every day. New technologies allowed people to adjust field work. So they were doing safety rundowns over Zoom, for example, every morning. And they were doing remote installations directed by contractors or other team members over video who were connected to onsite staff. So that innovation there may continue once we emerge from the pandemic, depending on the circumstances. But there is a reality that it's not going to work the same way. And I think there could be perceived inequities between office and field staff, right? Regarding that continued flexibility. And I think that is a key concern for HR managers. You know, we could see resentment from those who cannot avail of those remote work benefits. So you think for an example, an office employee who's able to work from home, if they have cold or cough or they're sick, or maybe their child is sick, or there's child responsibilities, versus a field staff person who does not have that option, and is going through their sick days or their vacation days, etc. So I think there is a challenge there, and we're going to need to spend some time on that.   Dan Seguin  14:49 This is really interesting, Michelle. Let's continue the conversation on challenges. What are the potential challenges attached to leading remote teams? What skill sets do managers have dispersed workforce need to inspire innovation and drive engagement across remote teams?   Michelle Branigan  15:09 I actually think this is going to be a key area of learning for managers, and supervisors of remote teams, you know, when employees are dispersed, and sometimes it's not in the city, even in the same city, it might be even in a different province, now. That manager has less insight into what the employee is actually doing. This links back a little bit to the productivity piece, I have read about some bias existing with managers believing that those working in the office do more than those who work at home. So I think we need to guard against that, right? Especially when we have seen that productivity hasn't dropped in the Canadian electricity industry, from the employers that we've spoken with. But, there was a US survey just in the fall of 2020, Gartner survey, and they looked at and spoke to about 3000 managers and 64% of managers and executives believe that employees who are in office are higher performers than remote employees. And 76 believe that in office workers are more likely to be promoted. That's something that I want to pulse more with our industry and something to watch. I think there's a potential issue there. Obviously. Some employers are turning to software to monitor remote working employees so that the manager can verify if people are working productively from home or working at all. Now, I think that practice is pretty controversial as an employer response to remote working; it's not one that I would endorse. I think if you have to monitor your team, to that degree, you have an issue of culture and morale. And then what type of message does it send to your employees? Right? You're not trusting them from the outset, that's going to impact your ability to hire, certainly to retain. And that's not a good idea, in a tight labor market. So I think managers need to presume intent, right, presume that the majority of your teams want to go to work to do a good job to be productive, and then give them the tools to make sure that they understand and meet their deliverables. So that means that while they're doing that, there also needs to be very clear communications about an individual's role and expectations about what that role actually is, right? So that's what's really important that we don't lose that make it very clear as to what is critical. And what is important. At the end of the day, no matter what channel you're using, team communications is really important, it's too important to be an afterthought. And ensuring that you have the right tools in place for collaboration is going to make sure that your team meets the objectives, they're being productive, they're hitting their deliverables, and supporting the organization. And, from a skills perspective, very similar to what they needed to do before, you know, empathy, very strong communication skills, listening skills, I think there will be more training required on a few things. Because managers are not just going to be expected to make sure that the task gets done, but they're the main point of contact within the organization, right? Trying to make sure that the employee feels valued, feels listened to, is engaged, feels part of the company. You know, managers may need to be trained to learn to acknowledge and respond to what they hear, be that responding to topics such as work overload, illness, childcare. I do think they have a lot on their shoulders. And I would say that it's going to be really important that managers, supervisors, you know, anyone with that leadership commitment, they're all under more pressure now than ever to support their staff. And so we need to make sure that we're also looking after the managers, right? I think that is incredibly, incredibly important.   Rebecca Schwartz  19:15 Thanks, Michelle. So with the post COVID landscape coming into reality, what does it mean for office workers or field workers? Specifically with respect to maintaining that focus on employee happiness, health, and safety?   Michelle Branigan  19:29 Well, mental health was a growing concern among employers, even before the pandemic, right? So I would say, when you look at wellness, that really has become a core business priority as a result of this pandemic. You know, we've seen a major shift from an employer's responsibility for their employees physical and mental health while on the job, to looking out for their well being both on and off the clock. And I think that leaders who are mindful of employee well being really can go a long way in helping individuals balance, you know, the mental health needs by being productive at the same time, and able to contribute their best towards organizational goals. At the end of the day, most individuals want to be their best at work, right? And employers can support that through a range of different initiatives. Whether that is defining flexible work hours and flexible work, maybe focusing on effort and results rather than time spent. You know, you want to make sure managers are not micromanaging. Are you judging people's contributions to work by the fact that they are in their chair from nine to five? Or are you looking at deliverables? And I think encouraging teams to establish and respect boundaries. Because quite often, you know, a few small changes can make a really large impact in supporting employees, especially when it comes to mental health. You know, opening that discussion, and having those sort of open supportive environments where people feel comfortable communicating their needs, that's a great place to start. And really looking at your employee engagement strategy. And asking your employees, what they value most as an employee is absolutely critical. Don't presume that you know what they want or value from you as an employer, or in the workplace.   Dan Seguin  21:38 Now, Michelle, let's move from wellness to culture. How can utilities be intentional about creating a strong, positive, and inclusive company culture? What are some best practices?   Michelle Branigan  21:54 Well, I think you hit the nail on the head, Dan, in using the word intentional. There's really increasingly more pressure for organizations to be more diverse and more inclusive. And, of course, that is driven by societal forces, clear messaging from this next generation, that is values driven. They care deeply about diversity, equity, and inclusion, and they are paying attention to it. They are looking at your annual reports, they are looking at your board of directors, they're looking at how your organization is represented in the media. And I speak to a lot of young people, and it still amazes me how many of them are really taking this into account, when they're actually out looking for a job. So, cultural inclusion for me, anyone knows, that knows me well, knows that I say this all the time, it starts from the top down, right? It takes commitment, it takes intention, and it has to be genuine at the end of the day. I think some of the best practices include, again, engagement and communication, you'll hear these things, we echo these words, these themes a lot. Asking employees for feedback on how to improve your company's diversity and inclusion in the workplace. Quite often, there can be a disconnect between management or leadership, and everyone else in the organization, whereas, you know, whereby the presumption is that everything is fine, there's no bias in the organization, no one feels alienated or excluded because of their, you know, their race or their gender, whatever it may be. And that's a dangerous assumption that can be easily made, just because the problems are not visible. And not just by leaders, but by anybody working in the company, right? Who may not realize that, you know, their colleague is facing any sort of difficulty or challenge based on, you know, cultural background or identity or gender. So, communication is really key. For me, another big one, setting goals and measuring results, best practice. Absolutely. If we are going to affect that cultural change and we're going to implement good practices, we need to measure and report on the progress that we've achieved and the benefits to the company and to the individual. And I would say, sometimes, you know, it can be easy for organizations to capture these good news stories or the things that they've done and report it up, report to the board, report to the C suite. Feed the information to your employees, so that they can see that there's actual genuine commitment to change there, to creating that inclusive environment, and that their feedback or input is actually being heard. And don't be afraid of the mistakes that are learned along the way because, again, this goes to the genuine commitment piece. If a company is truly responsive to the needs of the people that are working there and are making these attempts in good faith, you will get there eventually, right? So really, really important to look at that. I am going to put in a shameless plug, Dan, for the EHRC's Leadership Accord on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. So that, of course, is a framework to help companies do this; it's an actual framework that will help leaders commit to real progress and change; identify where the gaps are in their own organizations, and then put in an action plan to actually address it over a couple of years. So, it's a really good tool. And please check that out if you want to get started. And then for others who want best practices, and maybe don't know where to get started, another place is our illuminate now toolkit that's on our website. And that has tips and tools and videos to support managers to develop or enhance their best practice DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion), how to strategies, right? Because there's all sorts of things that an organization can do, from diversity on hiring panels, changing the language of maternity or paternity leave, to parental leave instead, in your policies. There are so many things to do to be inclusive, to make people feel like they belong to an inclusive workplace. More than we could cover, we could cover today, but there's lots of resources there on our website to help people on that journey.   Dan Seguin  26:25 Okay, you've touched on communications earlier, let's look at it through a digital workplace lens. What are organizations discovering about effective communication and collaboration?   Michelle Branigan  26:37 It's possible, you know, IT infrastructure really is the backbone of all modern workplace communications, right? When it goes wrong, we all notice very quickly now. And with the pandemic, we actually talked to organizations about this last year, about 30% of our employers told us they had to fast forward plans for better networking and connectivity. Over half had to increase their IT functionalities by setting up VPN or buying phones and that type of thing. Most organizations were very quickly able to ensure that video conferencing applications, like Zoom, were embedded as part of that day to day work environment. We've all seen instant messaging platforms like Slack, they've grown immensely in popularity, you know, it cuts down on emails when people are working remotely. And it also provides a forum for employees to engage. It's become sort of the equivalent of the watercooler right people telling jokes or sharing. So, it becomes an engagement tool, as well as a communication tool. But regardless of all the tools that are out there, you know, there's lots of things that you can use to bring your teams together and allow them to work efficiently. But I think the key to success is actually just utilizing those, they're a means to an end, right? To encourage active communication and maintain your company culture. And that really is no easy task in a digital environment. You know, you want to make sure that folks don't feel disconnected. I personally think it will be important to try and bring people together to meet in person, at some stage, be that twice a year at a company retreat, maybe it's once a week, or once a month, at an all hands on deck day. I've heard of people doing different things; it's going to depend, of course, on the size of your company, and how geographically spread you are. But one thing, you know, that does come to mind is when people work remotely, they're less likely to have social ties at the offices with colleagues who, over time, become friends, right? And that in itself erodes the connection that they have with the company. And it makes it easier for them to quit, as well. So you know, that can impact company culture, of course, and your retention, your retention strategies. And I think of how difficult it is for that next generation of new talent, young people who are just starting on their career, maybe in the first or second job, and they're not getting all of the benefits that exist by working in the office and having the opportunity to have a mentor, to have somebody that they can connect with and to listen to some of the conversations that take place in a professional setting and to the degree that they do in the office. So, I think IT is great, but it's how we actually use it that is going to make a difference.   Dan Seguin  29:39 Thanks, Michelle. But, now, this leads me to the follow up question. How can the energy sector ensure all employees across the organization, both office workers and frontline workers, have access to digital workplace technologies and feel engaged?   Michelle Branigan  29:59 Yes. Regardless of what you do right with your office first or hybrid remote first. Getting that technology to your teams to make sure that whatever way they're doing it as a group spread out, is really important. So make sure that they have access to those tools. I think you also need to be very transparent about expectations and performance. I know I mentioned that a little bit earlier. But, I think from an engagement perspective, there's a there's a few things that can be done. You know, we've all heard the expression death by PowerPoint. I think we're all turning into- I read this yesterday, and I thought it was great. Instead of zombies, we're all turning into "Zoombies", where we're all, you know, we're all worn out by the end of the day, because we all have so many of these Zoom meetings or video conference meetings that are absolutely exhausting. So, I think there is, you know, we need to look at how many Zoom meetings that we're having, are they really necessary, sometimes the telephone is an OK way to communicate. That old fashioned way of picking up the phone and talking to each other. Do you want to have cameras on? So, for some organizations, it's very important. Maybe for small meetings, you want to make sure that cameras have to be on and that's a requirement. But, maybe if it's a bigger meeting, and you have 100 or 200 people, you don't need everybody to have their camera on. And that's okay. So, the idea is you're trying to use these tools to make and make sure that everybody is engaged, and that they're not multitasking, that they're actually paying attention to what's going on on the screen. So, taking that into account and thinking about it carefully is really important. You know, when you do have meetings, and it's a meet, you know, you have people both in the room and virtually engaged, making sure that you're calling upon those who are not physically present in the room to speak. I think that's really important; not forgetting that there's people on the screen and just gravitating towards those who are who are actually around the conference room table, for example. Have a look and see, you know, are the people in the room, do they absolutely need to be in the meeting? Looking at how many video conference meetings are necessary. You know, we're all tired of the glitchy WiFi, telling people that they're muted, all those sorts of things, right? And they can be just exhausting. And they cannot replicate real life interaction. So, just looking at your policy of how you use the tools is very important. You know, I had a mixed meeting the other day where I had people from a couple of different provinces, on my own team, and the rest of us in the boardroom, where we had to share visuals. Nothing worked; the audio was terrible and so we went away with some lessons learned from the tools that we had and how we look to set that up so that it is a more engaging meeting for everybody concerned and productive at the end of the day.   Rebecca Schwartz  32:59 I'm wondering if you have words of wisdom or lessons learned from the past two years, dealing with the pandemic, and about communicating to, I guess, such a dispersed workforce?   Michelle Branigan  33:11 I would say, and you'll both like this, in the field that you're in, you cannot over communicate. Communication, communication, communication. I think no matter what kind of work situation we're in these days, whether it's working from home, the field, the office, a mix of all three of those, one thing hasn't changed. And that's that teamwork and collaboration are as important as ever. And that teams that communicate well are going to see better business results. They're going to be more innovative, they're going to be more productive. And, really, at the end of the day, when you have teamwork that's done right, it makes everyone feel that their contributions are valued. So, providing ways and means from people to be able to communicate with each other. And as a leader, communication is extremely critical to ensure that people feel engaged. And, again, it goes back, it goes back to culture.   Dan Seguin  34:19 Very interested in your thoughts on this next question, Michelle. There's a new phenomenon taking place. It's "The Great Resignation". Has the electricity and energy sector been affected? And have we surveyed the reasons why?   Michelle Branigan  34:35 So anecdotally, we are hearing that yes, it has affected, the industry. It seems like every other week I'm hearing about retirements all throughout the industry, Dan. I actually need to do and want to do, it's on my wish list, is to do some more labor market intelligence to see how that's actually reflected in the data because it's one thing to hear about it anecdotally. I like to see the data right. So what are companies reporting on? What are their attrition rates? Where are their pain points? And what are they seeing? And is it reflected in, you know, one set of occupations more than the other, for example, are more trades people leaving because they're in the field and they've had to, you know, experience and deal with COVID implications from a safety perspective, much more than somebody that is in that office environment. Again, it goes right back to what we spoke about at the beginning and some of those differences. So, I do want to do more data on that. I would say anecdotally, yes, we're dealing with issues. I don't know we're dealing with it to the same level that we're seeing in the USA? I don't know that Canada is seeing it there. We know that there's a tight labor market out there right now. The last Statistics Canada data, just in December, reported that the National Unemployment Rate had dropped to 6%. So that was approaching pre-pandemic levels. But, at the same time, I'm talking to everybody who is struggling to find employees right now, right? In all different types of occupation. But we have actually been talking about this for years in Canada, right? Many electricity employers are seeing that with that increased turnover on that demographic time bomb that I've been talking about, you know, all the baby boomers deciding to retire even earlier than planned. Anecdotally, due to the pandemic, a lot of times. And at the same time, younger employers have different expectations as to what they want from a career in a post COVID world and the type of company that they want to work for. And so losing talent in such a competitive labor market, it's really costly. It's quite time consuming. When you factor in the cost of recruitment, interviewing, onboarding. And then there's a problem there that those who are planning to leave may check out long before they actually give in their notice, right? So you do get a loss of productivity there that can impact others in the organization and contribute to reduced morale. So I think this is something that we will definitely be looking at over the coming months and years. What does the data tell us? Why are people leaving? And if they are going, is it because of some of the things I've mentioned earlier, such as the ability to work remotely, autonomy, flexibility? Or is it because they've decided that they want a completely different career path outside of the electricity industry? And this, there's one thing that I want to talk to employers about, is their plans on workplace models and hiring. Because if you remove the requirement to live near where you work, you do open up access to a wider pool of qualified workers right across the country, right? And that's going to be attractive to some companies in a tight labor market.   Rebecca Schwartz  37:59 So, given this "Great resignation", Michelle, how can the energy sector address the work life balance? And what about promoting a healthy work culture?   Michelle Branigan  38:08 Um, it's funny, we asked employees what their managers or employers could be doing to help during the pandemic. And I think a lot of this will transition over into this new way of working, the future of work, which is not really long in the future. It's here. Flexible work hours. These are the top five things that they mentioned to us: flexible work hours, better communication, making sure that people have the equipment, or the tools for work from home needs, mental health supports, and then socialization opportunities, right? All of those opportunities to engage with their colleagues. So, I think leaders and managers can start with a few strategies to do that. First of all, just remind your teams of the many mental health resources that are available to them. If you have an employee system program, talk about it. It's amazing how many employees forget that you have one of those because it's mentioned when you are onboard, and that's about it. Again, with many employees working from home, that average workday can easily bleed into additional hours at the dining room table. So, setting boundaries for your team to ensure that they are, you know, they don't continue to work well past their usual hours just because they can. Ontario, here in Ontario, the government has just enacted the right to disconnect policy. So, setting boundaries and ensuring that your team knows they don't have to respond to emails day and night. And recognizing that people may have different work schedules, depending on what it is that they do or their home circumstances. I think it's important to communicate that. When you're looking at, you know, retaining people- simple things, this is so simple, but recognizing your staff. Saying thank you can go an awful long way, even if it's for a regular task well done, right? Employee recognition, you know, can be a note of appreciation, or just even highlighting people in your internal newsletters. Leaders really need to set an example that will build a culture of recognition throughout the organization and making sure that employees, at the end of the day, feel appreciated for the work that they do. I think those are the sorts of things that promote a healthy work culture.   Dan Seguin  40:37 Now, Michelle, what can employers and leaders do to retain and attract employees in this challenging environment?   Michelle Branigan  40:48 So, um, I would say, there's a few things here, um, again, communicate. So, to keep good employers, you want to meet their needs and their expectations, and you want to understand what keeps them inspired, right? Senior managers have to understand the dynamics of their current employee base, the drivers of turnover. And remember that the things that initially draw people to a company, which may be pay and benefits, they're not necessarily the same things that keep them there. So, think work life balance, career development, performance management, company culture, that all becomes part of the equation, when an employee starts thinking "should I stay, or should I go"? So, looking at those sorts of things from a retention perspective is really important. And at the same time, you know, there does need to be recognition that the work needs to get done. Business is business, and, so, organizations, especially when it comes to remote working, will need coverage, not everybody may be able to come from home. In some instances, employees will leave no matter what you do. And in that case, it's better to have them gone than stay and be disengaged. I think it's really important, though- and it surprises me- sometimes many people, when companies don't do this, conduct an exit interview. To gauge why they left. And then use that data to reflect on any issues that may need to be addressed. So, I think that's something important that companies need to remember. When you're looking to retain employees or attract employees, not everything is about salary, but if you're at least in the ballpark, with the industry average, or if you're not in the ballpark, that could be a reason for losing somebody to the competition. So make sure that you're competitive, highlight the non monetary benefits to address competition from other industries. So do you provide opportunities for career development, or flexible hours, or the opportunity to be mentored? For example, does your benefit plan actually benefit your employees or only a portion of those? You know, it might be time to take a look at how flexible and useful at those plans are. And then who has access to flexible work? We've seen organizations where some managers allow their employees flexibility, while others don't. So I think the principle of fairness is going to apply here. Companies need to be consistent in whatever approach that they take. Another item, this is going to be incredibly controversial over the next year, Dan, and we're watching it closely, but it's the idea of reducing pay for those who work remotely. What happens when employees move to locations with a lower cost of living? Should employers lower their compensation, even though the impact of the employee's work hasn't changed? I think that is something that I'm reading about more and more, it's coming up more and more in conversations. And I think this is going to be very impactful from a recruitment and retention perspective. You know, think about an individual who has been working remotely and you know, they're now asked to come back into the office one day a week, they have a long commute, if there's only one day a week in the office or one day a month, they're more likely to be willing to put up with that. But if suddenly that changes to three day weeks, three days a week, well, then the question is, is the job and the commute worth it? Or is it more important to me, my home base, where I live, is that more important? So these are all the scenarios that, and the conversations that we're going to be having, with employees over the coming year. And I think one of the more innovative things that people need to do, as well, is really try and look at progressive HR practices to stay on top of what's actually motivating employees. So, you know, not just talking about exit interviews, but doing stay interviews. Asking people what will make them stay? What do they enjoy about working at your organization? And then developing retention plans based on workforce demographics, you know, because your your 22 year old may have a very different perspective to your 45 year old or your 55 year old. And so these are some of the things that I think are really important to think about, as we have multi-generations working in workplaces right now that have different values, not all different values, but some different values as they move through their careers.   Rebecca Schwartz  45:36 With all these changes in the workplace, such as values and expectations, can we future proof learning and development? And how can the sector better prepare the employees for this new future of work?   Michelle Branigan  45:48 I would say that it is critical to acknowledge that we're now in a state of continuous learning, it's not enough just to get your Engineering degree or to get your Journeyperson Ticket and think "that's it. I'm set for the rest of my career". Most people will have a number of different roles in their careers now. And so, as the technology advances and the industry evolves, the skills and competencies required to remain relevant in your job are going to increase. I see that right throughout all occupations. So, I think there's personal responsibility there on the part of the employee to understand the impacts and to evaluate their skill sets and see what they need to do. From the employer's perspective, oh my gosh, it makes absolute sense to support the professional development of your employees for so many reasons, right? Offering training and development opportunities. It's a great strategy to keep engagement high. But make sure it's relevant to employee goals, ask employees what they think would benefit them in their, in their, in their aspirations. Challenge workers by giving them more interesting work and stretch assignments. And really, you know, continuous learning and managing talent should be one of the key tactics that are discussed by your HR teams, to give opportunities to your employees, just to continuously develop. Whether that's through in house training, or support for them to do something, you know, external education, but show your employees that you're interested in developing a career path along with them. I think that's really, really critical.   Dan Seguin  47:25 Okay, Michelle, we always end our interviews with some rapid fire questions. Are you ready?   Michelle Branigan  47:33 I am.   Dan Seguin  47:34 Okay, let's go. What are you reading right now?   Michelle Branigan  47:38 Well, I'm hooked right now by a series of books called the enemy. It's a post-apocalyptic young adult horror series. It's written by Charlie Hickson. The books take place in London after a worldwide sickness has infected everyone 16 and older and has turned them into creatures similar to zombies. Basically, all the adults are eating the kids. It's extremely gory. And it makes the pandemic look like a walk in the park. And it's really noted for the fact that it kills off any possible character. So it really leaves you on edge all the time. So, that's what I am hooked into right now. And I run into my 13 year old's bedroom every now and again, very, very upset that they've killed off yet another one of my favorite characters.   Dan Seguin  48:32 Now, Michelle, what would you name your boat? If you had one?   Michelle Branigan  48:37 Oh, my gosh, "Let Me Off". I'm not one for boats, Dan, I'm too claustrophobic and I feel like I should be doing other things. So, I'm great for an hour. But then after that, yeah, get me out of here and onto dry land.   Dan Seguin  48:49 Now, who is someone that you admire?   Michelle Branigan  48:53 Oh, I don't know how anyone right now could say anything but Ukrainian people at this moment in time, right? The bravery and strength and staying there to fight for their country. The fear and the strength that those who must flee, that have children and babies in their arms; it's just heartbreaking to watch. And just the strength that we're seeing coming from everybody in that, from that country right now. I think that's top of mind. For all of us.   Dan Seguin  49:23 So true. Moving on to the next one. What is the closest thing to real magic that you've witnessed?   Michelle Branigan  49:31 Oh my gosh, Dan and Rebecca, I really struggled with this one. I think I'm a bit of a cynic when it comes to magic. I cannot think of anything for this except maybe that I suspend all cynicism when I go to Disneyland. And just get right into it. I love it. I would go again and again and again. So that's, I think, the closest to magic that for me,   Dan Seguin  49:54 What has been the biggest challenge to you personally, since the pandemic?   Michelle Branigan  50:01 For me, not being able to travel home to my family in Ireland. And then more generally, travel. I love to travel. Reading and travel; film. Those are my things. I get itchy feet really quickly. And so, like many people, I just think it's that sense of frustration when you can't just get up and go. Italy is my favourite country in the world. I can't wait to get back there. But, other than that, over the last couple of years, you know, I have to say that I have counted myself very lucky. We have a comfortable house, we've got a nice garden, food on the table. And I really do think that there's a big difference between want and need. And I think as a society, we have to, I think, start maybe being a little bit more grateful for what we have.   Dan Seguin  50:43 Okay. We've all been watching a lot of Netflix and TV lately. What's your favorite movie or show?   Michelle Branigan  50:52 For me, "Ozarks". Great acting, great writing. Absolutely superb. Loving it. And I'm looking forward to diving into the last six or seven episodes of "The Walking Dead". You might have got that reference from my reading material.   Rebecca Schwartz  51:10 Lastly, Michelle, what is exciting you about your industry right now?   Michelle Branigan  51:15 Oh my gosh, I would say the change. Change. Everything that's going on. It fascinates me. It drives me. it's exciting. You know, we're all talking about net-zero. We're talking about electrification, low carbon, climate change, you know, what kind of world are we going to live leave for our kids and our grandkids? And everything that's going on right now, it's probably very easy to become pessimistic, when we see some of the things and some of the challenges. And you know, you look at all the fires and the floods and everything like that. But, I think our industry is really motivated to address some of these challenges. And so, the change is what excites me and how we get there.   Rebecca Schwartz  51:58 Well, Michelle, that's it. We've reached the end of another episode of The ThinkEnergy podcast. If our listeners want to learn more about you and your organization, how can they connect?   Michelle Branigan  52:08 Go to our website, electricityhr.ca, a wealth of information there for folks. And, of course, I'm on LinkedIn, and always happy to hear from people. That's our, one of our jobs here and roles here is to talk to people about all these challenges and issues. And so, I love hearing from our industry folks as to the ideas that they may have to help us as we move this industry forward.   Dan Seguin  52:35 Again, Michelle, thank you so much for joining us today. I hope you had a lot of fun.   Michelle Branigan  52:40 I did have a lot of fun. Thank you both so much, Rebecca, Dan, always a pleasure to talk to you.   Dan Seguin  52:46 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.

Canada becoming net zero by 2050 is a commitment made by the federal government, but there's a lot of action needed at a community level before this can happen. Municipalities make up 50% of greenhouse gas emissions in Canada, so does that mean achieving net zero is actually a grassroots movement? Tonja Leach, Executive Director of QUEST Canada, joins Dan and Rebecca to talk about the importance of championing communities and how one of the biggest keys to a greener future is getting people to buy into the world we want to create.   Related links LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/questcanada/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/tonjaleach/ www.questcanada.org https://twitter.com/QUESTCanada info@questcanada.org tleach@infocanada.org   --- To subscribe using Apple Podcasts:  https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/thinkenergy/id1465129405   To subscribe using Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7wFz7rdR8Gq3f2WOafjxpl   To subscribe on Libsyn: http://thinkenergy.libsyn.com/ --- Subscribe so you don't miss a video: https://www.youtube.com/user/hydroottawalimited   Check out our cool pics on https://www.instagram.com/hydroottawa   More to Learn on https://www.facebook.com/HydroOttawa   Keep up with the Tweets at https://twitter.com/thinkenergypod   Transcript:   Dan Seguin  00:06 This is ThinkEnergy, the podcast that helps you better understand the fast changing world of energy through conversations with game changers, industry leaders, and influencers. So join me, Dan Seguin, and my co host, Rebecca Schwartz, as we explore both traditional and unconventional facets of the energy industry. Hey, everyone, welcome back. You know, we've talked a lot on the show about Canada's goal to be net zero by 2050. But I've been asking myself lately, if achieving net zero is really a grassroot movement. I mean, there's a lot of action that needs to happen at the local level before Canada can achieve its goals. And since 50% of greenhouse gas emissions in Canada are from municipalities, before we can talk about the big national picture, we need to look at every community across our country, and how they can affect change at their level, and what kind of coordination and effort will it take.   Rebecca Schwartz  01:15 That's right. Without a coordinated approach, communities with all of their different socio economic realities, different landscapes and different local perspectives may implement different measures that may not be compatible with their neighboring communities. Or they may fall short of achieving the necessary results.   Dan Seguin  01:34 Did you know that hydro Ottawa is going net zero by 2030. And the City of Ottawa has committed to achieving net zero of its operations by 2040. Both of these are great examples of grassroots initiatives. So here's today's big question. How important is it to empower community champions and influence decision makers to continue to create the conditions necessary for communities to contribute to Canada's Net Zero targets?   Rebecca Schwartz  02:07 On today's show, our special guest is Tonja Leach, Executive Director at Quest Canada. They're a nonprofit that supports communities in their quest to reach Net Zero. Tonja is a sought-after advisor working with Canada's energy sector, three levels of government, and community builders. And she helps them essentially to transition to a more sustainable energy future. Tonja is also active on a number of committees, like the Energy Futures Lab Partners council and steering committee, the Clean Resource Initiative Network, and the Positive Energy Advisory council, among others. And we're really happy she's here to talk to us today. Hey, Tonja, welcome to the show.   Tonja Leach  02:55 It's a pleasure to be here. Thank you so much for inviting me.   Dan Seguin  02:57 Tonja, as the executive director, maybe you could start by sharing with our listeners, what the QUEST organization is all about, such as maybe talk about your vision, your mission for Canada?   Tonja Leach  03:10 We're in the middle of updating our vision. So I'll give you the old version and recognize it will change slightly soon. So, our vision is that Canada's a nation of Smart Energy communities. And I say that's going to be updated, just because we've done some updating, you know, kind of tying things more closely to the net zero agenda. So there'll be some language changes to that. But the concepts and the principles still are accurate and remains the same. So, QUEST is a national nonprofit organization, and we support communities in Canada, on their pathway to Net Zero. Since we've been doing this since about 2007. And we facilitate connections, empower community champions and influence decision makers to implement efficient and integrated energy systems that best meet the community needs and maximize local opportunities. We develop tools and resources can be in stakeholders, rights holders, and advise decision makers, all with the goal of encouraging and enabling communities to contribute to Canada's netzero goals.   Dan Seguin  04:09 Okay, cool. What Critical Role do communities have in achieving Net Zero? How important is strong support and buy in from these communities?   Tonja Leach  04:21 Well, as I indicated, we work very closely with them. So maybe I have a biased opinion on this. But I mean, if you just look at the numbers, you know, communities are responsible for 50% of our energy use and about 50% of our emission. So that in and of itself tells you how important they are in achieving the Net Zero objectives that we're striving to achieve. So, Canada is going to have to rely quite heavily on communities to get there, but they require support and resources and they're not being supported or resourced in a way yet that they need to be really be able to play the impactful role that they can and should be playing. Many municipalities have been putting together community energy plans, community energy and emissions plans, you know, declaring climate emergency, I think there's over 500 communities in Canada that have now done that, and all the plans that go along with that, while quite aspirational, and I think that's a good thing, has really put municipalities in the driver's seat on energy. And that really has kind of flipped energy planning around a little bit, right. We know energy planning traditionally has been top down from the provincial level. But because they are playing such an active role in kind of dictating what that energy, their energy future looks like, it's actually put them in the driver's seat. So this is an interesting conundrum that we're facing right now. And it has led to a number of misalignments, you know, disconnects between what the province thinks about how energy is going to look in 2050, compared to what local governments think it's going to look like  in 2050. And, you know, I think there's a number of stakeholders that are kind of being caught in the crosshairs of that at this point in time, and we need to be building better alignment across them. So they have a very critical role to play coming back to your question. But there's still a lot of uncertainties about how we actually leverage the, you know, that the role that communities have to play and how we enable them to do that.   Dan Seguin  06:17 Tonja, I'm curious, what are the low hanging fruits municipalities can take advantage of?   Tonja Leach  06:24 Yeah, I think this is an interesting one, I think one of the things that part of the uncertainty comes from the fact of not knowing who has what role or responsibility to play and when to play that card. But municipalities, just by their very nature, have a number of, you know, cards in their hand to play. They're responsible for land use planning, and we know that one of the biggest impacts on our energy use is land use, right? How are we moving around in our communities? How effectively and efficiently can we do that, you know, places, creating communities where you can live work, and play makes a big difference on the amount of energy that we that we need. And also, you know, making sure that we're kind of balancing, supply and demand. And if you think about that, from a thermal context, where is heat, waste heat being generated from, say, an industrial process, that can actually be leveraged in the system itself. And if you build communities in a way and plan communities in a way that you can take advantage of those, you're obviously that much further ahead. They also have responsibility on transportation, you know, whether that is public transportation systems, and we see lots of kind of hybrid systems coming in now as well. You know, I mentioned low carbon thermal enabling Net Zero buildings and Net Zero infrastructure development, and supporting renewable energy deployment, distributed energy resources. There's lots of opportunity there, although lots of challenges in that regard as well. So, there's lots of low hanging fruit that they can take advantage of at this point in time and kind of start to contribute to the outcomes that we're all collectively striving for.   Rebecca Schwartz  07:57 Okay, now, what makes QUEST's approach to supporting community netzero objectives unique?   Tonja Leach  08:03 Yeah, thanks. I think what makes us unique is, well, a number of factors actually, at the highest level, I'd say that we take a systems approach to kind of the energy transition more broadly speaking, not to kind of belittle the need for a sectoral approach, but we need both. And if we don't, my analogy here is is you can't rehabilitate a forest, if you only focus on the trees, you need to be looking at the entire ecosystem. So that's the approach that we take is kind of looking at it from an ecosystem, and how do you kind of maximize the efficiency of the entire system or rehabilitate the entire system. So that's kind of the at the highest level our focus. We're also unique in that were across Canada, so we can actually see what's going on in different jurisdictions and kind of share best practices and lessons learned between jurisdictions, which is also really helpful. And we're also focused on what I call the less sexy stuff. So as far as we're not necessarily talking about specific technologies. We are, you know, there's a recognition, I think it was the International Energy Agency says, we have 80% of the technological solutions, we need to get to 2050. But the challenge is really getting them deployed. And that's where we focus. So this is on, you know, governance structures, business models, regulatory structures, legislation, policy, all of those, you know, there's no ribbon cutting ceremonies or any of those things, right. But those are the things that I think are increasingly being recognized as the inhibitors of or the pressure relief valve that we need to address the need for going to not just achieve net zero, but be sustainable and net zero.   Rebecca Schwartz  09:48 And a quick follow up for you, Tonja, you recently published a 2021 impact report. What are some of the highlights from this report that you're most proud of?   Tonja Leach  09:57 Well, I'm not sure if it's actually called out in the impact report, but I will say that I'm most proud of my team. I think that the team here at QUEST, we're often told that we punch well above our weight. And I do believe that that's true. And they're just an incredible group of people to work with. So just want to call that out first and foremost. In the 2021, impact report, that was also the first year that we saw that kind of major first successes from a project that we have going on in New Brunswick, called the Smart Energy Community Accelerator. And coming back to my first comment I made here about our vision that's in its next iteration to be reframed as the Net Zero Community Accelerator. And it really is focused on building that local capacity and the results of that project were greater than we had anticipated that they would be. So there's, there's a lot of positive momentum there. And, you know, kind of we are taking that as where do we go next with that? How do we expand that to be a national program that supports both building local capacity that's needed. So the tools, the resources, the knowledge, etc., but also kind of adding another stream to that, which is focused on getting projects to the point of implementation. So project initiation, we'll call it. So we're really proud of the work that we've been doing there with communities directly. The other piece that I think I really want to call out, as well as the Innovation Sandbox projects that we've had on the go, and was referenced in that report, as well. And this is really addressing that issue, again, around the regulatory structure, you know, the regulatory structure that we have is not really designed for innovation. So how do you kind of build innovation into that, and the Innovation Sandbox work that we've been doing, which is a concept, the Innovation Sandbox concept, was actually first started in the financial sector, and has been in other jurisdictions around the world brought into the energy space. And so we're doing that here in Canada. I'm really proud of that work as well.   Dan Seguin  11:56 Now, with over 5000 plus communities with different political infrastructures, local concerns, and socioeconomic composition. Tonja, how can local perspective be captured and aligned?   Tonja Leach  12:12 Yeah, it's a great question. And I think this is one of the biggest challenges we're actually facing today. I think there's many people know kind of what they and their own organization can possibly can contribute. But the alignment of all of these things is really the nugget that we need to crack. So I hate to say that we need deeper engagement, because we hear that so often right, and we're beyond just wanting to talk about things, we want to be doing things. But we do need to be engaging much more deeply and across multiple sectors more effectively. Because we need clarity on costs on trade offs on who's taking on what role, who has, what responsibility, what the timelines are, all of these things are unknown. And I think people are making assumptions about them at this point in time, and that's leading to the misalignment. So in order to get to the alignment, we have to be much more engaged with each other and working much more collaboratively. A great comment that I heard the other day, which was, we must stop the energy solution Hunger Games, right? This is not about anybody, you know, taking over somebody else's space, as in this is an end scenario, right? We need all hands on deck if we're going to get there and we have to work collaboratively to get there. And we have to be understanding and respectful of who's got what role and responsibility in the transition.   Rebecca Schwartz  13:45 So we hear you're helping municipalities reach reduction targets by enabling investments of local renewable energy projects and infrastructure. I'm wondering if you could just unpack this for me a little bit, and maybe give us some examples?   Tonja Leach  13:59 Yeah, so I would say that we enable investment by helping to streamline processes. So I'll give you an example of that. This is a few years ago now. But there was an energy utility in Alberta that was looking to or wanting to kind of build out solar. And they spent, you know, two years of their time in regulatory hearings, you know, trying to figure out the regulatory construct for this. And then it came time to kind of made it through all of that process. And it was time to actually kind of engage with the community to deploy their vision for the solar system. And because they hadn't engaged the community at the front end of this, the community was not very happy about where they had sited on the riverbed, the solar system. So that really stalled the process. So a lot of what our role and kind of my comment about streamlining the process itself is kind of making sure you've got all of the right stakeholders engaged at the right part of the process. And so that you don't run into these hiccups at the back end, that is just going to slow you down or stall the process. So it seems a bit backwards that you want to take the time the front end, but by taking the time at the front end, you've actually kind of relieved the issue that you may run into at the backend. So a lot of our work is really about kind of playing that coordinator and streamlining the process.   Dan Seguin  15:27 Thanks, Tonja. Great example. Now, from what I'm hearing, there's an incredible amount of momentum, around Net Zero pledges in the public sector, from governments around the world and from private sector as well. What are your thoughts around these Net Zero commitments from organizations? How do they differentiate spin from substance?   Tonja Leach  15:50 Well, I guess on the one hand, I would say that it's great that we're seeing the environment, climate change, climate action, sticking through what I would say, as a number of serious challenges. COVID, Black Lives Matter, Indigenous reconciliation, what's going on in Ukraine right now, the fact that this is still kind of remaining on the radar, I think it's a really positive sign, because I think it's been derailed many times over the past 30 plus years. So I think that's a very positive sign from my perspective on the momentum that we've got, we must maintain that momentum. And many pledges are ambitious. With a lot of like, you know, this is what we're going to do, but we don't know how we're going to do it, yet. And I think actually, in a previous podcast of yours, Bryce Conrad mentioned his moon shot. And, and I think that this is good to right, I think this is really important that we're putting a stake in the ground and saying "this is what we are going to achieve". Understanding we don't yet know how but we are smart people will figure it out. I think those are essentially what Bryce said. And this is good. But we've, I think what takes it from a spin to substance is action. And we also need to start to kind of define. So we need to start to define the how, of what you know how we're going to achieve that moon shot. But we also need to accept that it's not going to be perfect. And that's okay. We're going to make mistakes, we need to learn from those mistakes, we need to move on from those mistakes. We need to share the lessons that we've learned so that other people don't follow in our footsteps. And we kind of help everybody leapfrog down the road as it were. But yeah, we have to start to take action to take it from spin to substance.   Rebecca Schwartz  17:38 All right, Tonja, in your report, All Net Zero Pathways Begin with a Local Step, you speak of how we need to account for behavioral changes, and social acceptability to scale up net zero solutions. What do you mean by that, exactly?   Tonja Leach  17:53 Yeah. And what I mean is that we don't get to Net Zero without people. So we talk about Net Zero in terms of, you know, a federal objective, and we talk about it in terms of, you know, introducing electric vehicles into our grid and Net Zero buildings. But actually, you know, to maintain the momentum that we were talking about earlier, we need buy in from people. So people play a huge role. We also need people to want to live in a world that we're trying to create. So you know, bringing people along in that process is so critically important. They need to be under, you know, have understanding of the trade off, that will, no matter what we do come out of this, right? There's likely trade offs on costs, there's possibly trade offs on reliability, but we can accept those for the environmental benefit that we're going to, you know, achieve. But if we're not clear about what those trade offs are and people aren't accepting of them, then it becomes much more difficult to accomplish the outcome of net zero that we're trying to achieve. I think that, you know, people are instrumental in insisting on equity and Indigenous reconciliation as part of this transition. So this is not just about transitioning our energy systems, we have to deal with these social issues as part of that. And that actually is an opportunity. And we should be leveraging that as an opportunity. And we need to see I mean, at the most basic level, people need to be willing to walk or ride a bike or take public transit in order to reduce the emissions that each of us contribute to our society and globally. So, have a big role to play. And if we are, you know, forging down this path without engaging them and building the buy in along the way, eventually we're going to fall off our stool. So we need them, we need many people involved.   Dan Seguin  19:46 Now, Tonja, what do you think are the most promising and impressive carbon reduction and removal technologies from the perspective of maximizing the ability to achieve Net Zero by 2050?   Tonja Leach  20:01 Yeah, so actually I did, you gave me this question in advance. And I thank you for doing that. So I did a little bit of research because I do sit on the Clean Resource Innovation Network steering committee, and they've been, you know, using some federal government funding to support some really interesting technological projects. And one of the things that is often called out as you know, one of the bigger challenges we face is methane. And, you know, methane is obviously a huge contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. And so it's one of those things that, you know, if we don't find a solution to that, then we're, you know, it's a harder process that we're trying to get through to get to Net Zero. So, there's a company called Econ Power, that has pioneered a technology called pulse methane pyrolysis. Don't ask me about the details of how it works, but it converts methane into hydrogen, and solid carbon, and it virtually eliminates CO2 emissions from the process. So I think it's those I'm just using that as an example. I think it's like those types of technologies that kind of can enable us to use and maximize the infrastructure that we've already developed. But, you know, helps to decarbonize those systems, because there's industries that are really challenging to decarbonize, right. And so, you know, we often reference like steel and cement and agriculture. And so if, you know, we need to be able to provide solutions that decarbonize those sectors as well. So I'll just I'll point to kind of those that decarbonize methane as a useful technology that I think, is maybe just on the early days of, you know, really being scalable and successful.   Dan Seguin  21:55 Cool. Okay. What are you most excited about when it comes to the vision and opportunities of Net Zero?   Tonja Leach  22:05 You know, to be honest, I think it's about collaboration, and what will come from that. I mean, as a society, I think we've all been pretty good about collaborating so far. But and there's more of that happening. But I think that, that for me is the exciting part. I think this is where, you know, really great ideas are born out of, you know, good collaboration. I'm really excited about, you know, much deeper energy system integration than we've seen so far. And there's many ways that that can happen through low carbon thermal solutions, distributed energy, resources, etc. So, anyway, yeah, I'm really excited about the collaboration component of this and how we, you know, collectively, bring ourselves together to achieve a mutually beneficial outcome.   Rebecca Schwartz  22:56 Okay, so how are different levels of government develop synergies across sectors to create opportunities that will enable innovation?   Tonja Leach  23:05 I'm gonna come back to a comment I said earlier about the energy solution Hunger Games. That just needs to stop. Right. We've been pointing fingers for so long and saying, "my solution is better than your solution". So for me, it's it's really about shifting from, I would say, an overemphasis, I think, on kind of sectoral solutions versus looking at things from a systematic perspective. But I think that is a big piece. And then, because nothing actually works in isolation of other things. Right. And so it's how do we take that more systematic approach to it? So it is a recognition that this is an 'and" conversation, not an "or" conversation. I think that is one of the, yeah, so I'm not I don't know if I'm directly answering your question, Rebecca. But I feel like this is kind of the nugget that we have to solve.   Dan Seguin  23:58 This one, our listeners always enjoy. What are some of the biggest barriers and challenges you've identified in your roadmap to zero emissions?   Tonja Leach  24:12 Yeah, as I said before, I think that it's not technology. So you know, I think it is not technology and that new technology, it's being able to deploy the technology that we have at scale. And that comes back to you know, those soft things that I was talking about earlier, around policy alignment. How is the policy structure between the province and you know, the energy utilities, energy service providers, regions and municipalities? How is that aligning? How is that mutually reinforcing? Because right now, it's not, I would argue.You know, governance structures, more broadly speaking, clarity of roles and responsibilities. You know, we need all the various actors to bring their solutions to the table and coordinate them. If we're going to achieve the outcomes that we're looking for. So the biggest challenge is that coordination and really, you know, getting to the clarity that we need on cost, on trade offs, on roles, responsibilities, and making sure that we then have the governance structures in place that enable those outcomes.   Rebecca Schwartz  25:17 Thanks, Tonja. Now, what do you think is the biggest myth or misunderstanding about Net Zero?   Tonja Leach  25:22 That's a hard one. Lots of misunderstanding. I gotta throw out cost. I don't think there's, you know, I would say the industry as a whole doesn't really have a good understanding of what this is going to cost to get us there. And not that I think that it could, we could actually put a real number on it. But we don't know how much it's gonna cost. We don't know who's expected to pay. This energy transition is very different than some of the transitions that we've seen before this, because they were always adding a new resource base, I would call it, into the mix. Right? This isn't about that. This is about how do we decarbonize the one that we've got? And that is a very different, it's a different challenge. Yeah, so I think the biggest myth or, you know, misunderstanding is that perhaps that this is simple. And that it's not going to cost us. Because it is going to cost us and it's very complicated.   Dan Seguin  26:23 Okay, Tonja, we always end our interviews with some rapid fire questions. Are you ready?   Tonja Leach  26:30 I'm ready! Yes.   Dan Seguin  26:31 Okay. Let's go for it. What are you reading right now?   Tonja Leach  26:36 I'm just cracking open Mark Carney's "Values". As I said, I'm just cracking it open. But this is what interested me in it. The title is "Values: Building a Better World for All" and I'm reading this, sorry, "Mark Carney examines the shortcomings and challenges of the market in the past decade, which he argues has led to rampant public distrust, and the need for radical change. The book touts tangible solutions for leaders, companies and countries". So very timely, I would say with everything that's going on globally right now. And I'm hoping to get some useful insights from that book.   Dan Seguin  27:10 Cool. What would you name your boat? If you had one?   Tonja Leach  27:15 I don't have one. But my grandfather had one and his name was "Pipit", and I would have to choose that same name. The name is actually a seabird and the class of boat was a Seabird. So that's the correlation.   Dan Seguin  27:30 Okay. Moving on. Who is someone that you admire?   Tonja Leach  27:35 Oh, gosh, I think that's changed for me in the last week and a half. The President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, how could we not say that I admire I mean, just the way he has conducted himself throughout the last week and a half; stood up for his citizens, you know, kind of rallied the world around them and their challenges. Yeah, I truly admire what he's doing right now.   Dan Seguin  28:01 Now, what is the closest thing to real magic that you've witnessed?   Tonja Leach  28:08 Okay, this is a funny story. We were driving in a snowstorm at night, maybe a month ago or so on a dark road, sounds terrible. And a car went flying by us and in the cloud, of, you know, snow that kicked up off the road. And then when it settled back down, the car was gone. And we were on a dead straight road, there was no tail lights. It was just gone. And I have, you know, both my husband and I looked at each other, like, where did it go? Is it in the ditch, it's just gone. And still, to this day, it has just gone no idea where it went. So that's a disappearing act.   Dan Seguin  28:46 Okay, Tonja, what has been the biggest challenge to you personally, since the pandemic?   Tonja Leach  28:53 Oh, gosh, okay, um, well, I will start to say that I come from a place of privilege, and that I own my own home, I have my family. We've all been safe through all of this. So I'll start with all of that. But I would say, and I will also say that QUEST was a virtual organization before this, so that certainly helped as well. But I would say the hardest thing is transitions. Transitioning from work to home is literally the length of time it takes me to walk down a hallway. So you know, being able to shift gears from your work mind to mom mind, in that very short period of time. And obviously, when my kids were learning virtually at home, there was zero transition there at all right, it's kind of like double, you know, kind of playing multiple roles all at once. So I would say that's been the hardest thing, but by no means is that hard compared to what a lot of people have been through.   Dan Seguin  29:51 Now. This next one is pretty cool. We've all been watching a lot of Netflix and TV lately. What's your favorite movie or show right now?   Tonja Leach  30:03 I think I'm playing catch up on this. So we at QUEST, we often like to share some of the great stuff that is on Netflix or other streaming channels. But I'm catching up right now on "The Witcher", and I'm quite enjoying "The Witcher".   Dan Seguin  30:16 And lastly, what is exciting you about your industry right now, Tonja?   Tonja Leach  30:21 Well, I would say that despite the challenges that we face on, you know, figuring out who's got what role and what responsibility; never has it ever been as exciting time in the energy space as it is now. I mean, it's challenging. But that brings excitement to that, you know, to the mix. So yeah, I would just have to say that, like everything, really everything about what's going on right now, but yeah, I'm, you know, yeah, this is this collective objective of achieving a sustainable Net Zero future is just, it's inspiring. And, yeah, it's really exciting to see how everybody's trying to figure out how we come together to achieve that outcome.   Rebecca Schwartz  31:12 All right, Tonja, this is it. We've reached the end of another episode of The ThinkEnergy podcast. Now if our listeners want to learn more about you and your organization, how can they connect?   Tonja Leach  31:23 Yeah, great. So you can connect with us through our website, www.questcanada.org. That's probably the fastest and easiest way; you can reach out to QUEST at info@questcanada.org. And I will even throw it out there, you can reach out to me directly TLeach@questcanada.org.   Dan Seguin  31:41 Again, thank you so much for joining us, Tonja. I hope you had a lot of fun.   Tonja Leach  31:46 I certainly did. This was a lot of great questions. And thank you for the opportunity to be here and share my thoughts with you.   Dan Seguin  31:53 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.

Technology has evolved so rapidly to make our lives easier, but many would argue these advancements have been a leading cause in the current state of climate change. Knowing we need to find cleaner energy methods, is it possible technology could help solve the problem it may have helped create? Join host Dan Séguin as he sits down with accomplished entrepreneur, best-selling author, and award-winning podcaster Amber Mac to discuss the potential impact technology could have on a greener future. They also explore how Millennials and Generation Z are likely to be leaders in creating purpose-first technology, the rise in popularity of the work from home movement, and why infrastructure is hindering access to electric vehicles.  Related links LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ambermac/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/ambermac --- To subscribe using Apple Podcasts:  https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/thinkenergy/id1465129405 To subscribe using Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7wFz7rdR8Gq3f2WOafjxpl To subscribe on Libsyn: http://thinkenergy.libsyn.com/ --- Subscribe so you don't miss a video: https://www.youtube.com/user/hydroottawalimited Check out our cool pics on https://www.instagram.com/hydroottawa More to Learn on https://www.facebook.com/HydroOttawa Keep up with the Tweets at https://twitter.com/thinkenergypod Transcript: Dan Seguin  00:06 This is thinkenergy, the podcast that helps you better understand the fast changing world of energy through conversations with game changers, industry leaders, and influencers. So join me, Dan Seguin as I explore both traditional and unconventional facets of the energy industry. Hey, everyone, welcome back. I think it's fair to say that within the last decade or two, technology has evolved and innovated at an accelerated pace, unlike any other time in human history, like the fact that Apple releases a new generation of its iPhones every single year, it seems like society has created a demand for faster and better technology. As britannia.com says, social need does drive technological innovation. We're also living in a time where the resources are available for us to achieve these advancements, unlike, say, in 1490, where Leonardo da Vinci had sketches for helicopters, airplanes, and believe it or not submarines, he had the vision, but not the resources at that time to make his inventions a reality. And perhaps, at the time, society didn't have a need for such things. Okay, let's fast forward to today. And when it comes to a major world problem, like climate change, you could argue that there is a real social need for faster and better technology for cleaner sources of energy. And while not all technology exists to achieve net zero, at the very least, some might get us closer. It's hard not to feel that innovation and technology are what's going to help us solve the current climate crisis, even if some would argue that innovation and technology may have caused the predicament that we are currently in in the first place. Now, here is today's big question. So we know that as a society, we need to change how we use energy, find cleaner methods and develop technologies to make this happen. But is that enough? And can technology really curb the impact of climate change? Our special guest today is recognized internationally as an innovation and technology leader. Her professional accomplishments include a best selling author, award winning podcaster, a sought after keynote speaker and accomplished entrepreneur, and she joins us today. So very cool. Amber McArthur is what many call a multi hyphenate. She is a regular business host and experts on Fast Company, CNN, Bloomberg, CBS CTV, the Marilyn Denis show, and Sirius XM, where she co hosts another podcast the fi, better known as Amber Mac, she started her career in San Francisco and Boston, during the .com. Boom, she left the startup world to join Microsoft to build one of the first female focused lifestyle portals. And in 2006, she started her own digital agency. Welcome, Amber, thank you very much for taking the time to join us on this show. Let's kick things off by asking what comes to mind when you hear the word technology and innovation?   Amber Mac  04:04 Well, the first thing that comes to mind when I hear the words technology and innovation is that we need more of it in Canada today. So I think one of the most interesting things that we're seeing when it comes to technology and innovation is when technology can solve a certain problem. And we have many problems in our world today that do need solving. And that's why there has to be such a focus on technology for the future, especially when it comes to the next generation.   Dan Seguin  04:32 Okay, Amber. Now, what do you think are the biggest causes or drivers of technological advancements and innovation today?   Amber Mac  04:42 Well, I think what we've seen historically, especially over the past few decades, is that money is a big driver when it comes to technology and innovation. In 1999. I moved out to San Francisco to work in the startup scene because there was so much money being invested in that community at that time. Now that hasn't really shifted, there's still a lot of money in Silicon Valley. But we're seeing that there are pockets of places across Canada, where there is more investment when it comes to the technology sector. So the truth is, if you're in a community and you're developing technology, it's very difficult if you aren't in one of those core hubs across the country.   Dan Seguin  05:21 Okay. What do you think was the biggest tech innovation that changed the world in 2021?   Amber Mac  05:29 That is a really good question. So I'm thinking you've been thinking about all types of technology innovations. And of course, if I think if you asked me this question in 2020, I would have said, the mRNA technology that has allowed so many of us to get vaccinated, I think, in 2021, when we look at the different types of innovations in our society, I would still stick with the Health Tech theme. Because what I've seen more and more is that this is probably one of the most exciting sectors when we think about the future of technology. And the place where I think I would say deserves the most attention is perhaps within wearables. Right now I'm wearing a band called The whip band that allows me to know if my respiratory rate is off, my HRV rates, all of those details, my sleep, my activity. And I think when we think about an individual, harnessing the power of being able to have data at their fingertips 24/7 In terms of being able to understand their health, I think we've kind of underestimated how critical and important that is, especially during pandemic times.   Dan Seguin  06:37 Now, I know you recently had a conversation with Minister Gibo, the new Minister of the Environment and Climate Change, technologically speaking, what are your thoughts on Canada's plan to be net zero by 2050?   Amber Mac  06:52 I think technologically speaking, when we look at the year 2050, I think most people will agree that seems like a long way away. And I understand the importance of having deadlines. But I think for a lot of Canadians, I think individuals are still kind of unsure about how they can contribute to achieving this goal in Canada. And I think at the end of the day, that's the piece that is missing. You know, we have questions many times in our society, does this mean that I should eat less meat? Does this mean that I should no longer drive a gas powered vehicle? Does this mean that I should think about heat pumps in my home and we have so many questions, but I think at the individual level, Canadians are still kind of unsure about how they can be partners in this goal. And I do think it's up to the federal government to do a better job of communicating that I think businesses are starting to get up to speed in terms of their responsibility. But I do believe that each Canadian can also play a role. But we need a clear definition in terms of what that role is going to be, and how we can help things along the way. So maybe that deadline could be even sooner.   Dan Seguin  08:01 Okay. How does that goal to curb climate change impact technology, as well as us and our everyday lives?   Amber Mac  08:11 Well, I think what we're seeing with this goal in mind is that when we talk about technology, there's a huge opportunity in this country, for those organizations that focus on climate tech. And I think when we say the term of climate tech, the truth is that all technology should have our climate in mind. So I hope at some point, that that is just technology for the future. So I think at the end of the day, I think we're gonna see some incredible opportunities for organizations, including startups in this country, to really start to focus on solutions in terms of getting to that goal. And I think there'll be plenty of opportunities for both investors as well as inventors and researchers along the way, but we really have to learn how to nurture those communities. Because Canada is really great at research. But we're not so great at the commercialization of some of that research. And that's where we can definitely do a better job.   Dan Seguin  09:08 In your opinion, Amber, what innovations in the energy sector or by society at large, with respect to energy use have been the most impactful?   09:20 Well, I've been reading a number of reports, you know, every year in the tech sector, we constantly have these reports that talk about the top technology of 2021. And there are always these really compelling lists on that list. We see technology like heat pumps, you know, it's not exactly the sexiest of technology, but I think there are some places across Canada that are doing a really good job of providing incentives for individual homeowners to actually put heat pumps into their home. We have a home in Charlottetown Prince Edward Island and everybody on PEI Believe it or not, is always talking about heat pumps. Seems like a weird conversation, but they understand their energy efficient that they can get rebates from the government. We don't hear as many of those conversations in other places like where I live now in Ontario. So when it comes to the future of the climate, I think having more of these conversations more incentive for individuals to change their habits, that is definitely critical. We also see headlines on a regular basis, I was just looking on CTV News. And I saw this headline a few days ago, Ontario, researchers create chemical compounds that can neutralize COVID-19. This is amazing research that's being done here in Toronto. However, if you get a little bit further down in the article, you see that it's going to take a couple of years for this technology to come to market. So perhaps a little too late. But we again, we do a great job in this country in terms of research in the space of technology. And we're always innovating. It's just that extra step to get it out there into the public. Okay,   Dan Seguin  10:55 that being said, what does the future of technology look like as we embark on a journey to evolve our energy resources to a netzero future by 2050?   Amber Mac  11:07 Well, I think that 2021 has actually been a pretty ugly year in the world of technology, in some ways, probably not specific to the energy sector. But if we look at some of the big tech companies of today, I think what we've seen is that many of the leaders in that space perhaps lack the vision or the commitment to put things like climate, front and center. And so what I'm hoping for, and I hope this isn't just wishful thinking, is that we see more technology companies, but more specifically leaders who focus on being responsible when it comes to the evolution of technology to help people and and help out a larger population of people. It can't always be about profit, we have to also be focusing on purpose first. Now, if I want to say there's a silver lining there, I think maybe it's the next generation of leaders in the sense that I do believe that they are much more savvy about the future of the planet, and they have energy concerns already, even my 12 year old. And so I believe that next generation has a better possibility of being the leaders of tomorrow that we need to develop technology to make this planet a healthier place.   Dan Seguin  12:20 Now, Amber, based on your knowledge of technology and societal change. What are people looking for in tech? Like, what do they need?   Amber Mac  12:31 Well, how long do you have because I would say one of the things I've learned after almost 20 years in this industry, is that there aren't really that many of us who are out there and have made careers of demystifying technology. I've been fortunate to be able to do that. And I assumed by this point in my career, that there would be, you know, dozens of people who would flock to this job, so to speak in Canada, but there really aren't that many people. And I think what we see today is that Canadians, as individuals have more and more questions all the time about how technology can improve their lives. And I always believe that individuals are hungry and excited about doing the right thing when it comes to technology choices for themselves for the planet. But I do think that a lot of people are confused about what technology to choose. And I do think some technology companies haven't done a great job of demystifying technology to explain how it works, you know, heat pumps, again, if we can go back to that. I mean, that's a great example, a lot of people don't understand exactly how heat pumps actually work to both potentially cool and warm your house. So we have to do a better job. And maybe it's the responsibility of the technology companies. But there probably also is a role for our governments at all three levels to play when it comes to communicating the technology that can make our lives better, and again, can help us in this climate fight.   Dan Seguin  13:55 Now, where do you think the direction of smart technology and devices are going? Is it AI? Autonomous or something unexpected?   Amber Mac  14:07 Well, I think one of the most exciting trends that we're seeing in this space in terms of the future of technology is around the topic of automation. That, of course includes many AI systems. And so when we think about automation at large, I know people worry that this could potentially impact jobs, which it likely will to some extent, but there is a role in the future for automation to be able to play via a significant player in healthcare is one example. You know, just think about all of the research we've seen over the past few years with AI technology that can help to diagnose things like breast cancer more efficiently even then, the human eye. And so I think if we look at the potential of the future AI and automation is probably going to have the biggest impact on our society, it will be beneficial, but we also have to be prepared as a society in terms of having the skills to be able to thrive in the age of automation, knowing again, that some jobs may be at risk.   Dan Seguin  15:07 Are there any Canadian innovations or technologies that have captured your attention?   Amber Mac  15:15 Well, over the years, I've been lucky enough to keep an eye on to some of the top technology companies in the country and even interview some of those founders in the early days. And I would say that there are some bright stars when it comes to categories like fin tech, in the software and E commerce space. I mean, it's hard to have a conversation about technology changing the world without mentioning Ottawa based Shopify. So these are the type of companies that I've kept an eye on. But I do believe that we should be talking about having dozens of Shopifys in our society in terms of what Canadians have the potential to do in the future. So for me, there are sort of glimmers of hope, as far as the innovation that's happening in the tech sector. But I do think we can have to do a better job of the commercialization of some of that technology. And I don't think you have to move to the states anymore, like I did in 1999, to be able to succeed, I think you can have a global technology company that is built and successful right here at home.   Dan Seguin  16:18 Okay, Amber, what do you think the next generation, millennials, or Gen Z's can teach us about technology, or the environment?   Amber Mac  16:31 Well, you know, I think that I would probably look further to Gen Z. I'm not giving up on Millennials just yet. But you know, millennials are getting older. And I think Gen Z tends to be this more exciting category of young people that have grown up with idols out there like Greta Thunberg, and who have said that, hey, this is a fight that we are prepared to fight, we want our parents to fight it, we want our government to fight it, we want our teachers to fight it. And there are activists like us going out there and fighting it. So I am probably most excited about Generation Z in terms of their potential to be able to actually make changes in the world in the future when they come into positions of power. At the same time, I'm hesitant to put the weight of climate on this young generation of kids who maybe haven't had a chance to really be kids, because they've had both the reality of dealing with the COVID 19 pandemic and the realities of dealing with a burning planet that have been basically sitting on their doorstep for so long. So it concerns me a little bit in terms of the pressure we put on them. But I do believe that we're going to see some exciting leaders come out of that generation.   Dan Seguin  17:43 Now thinking of your best selling book, is it still possible to outsmart your kids online, or when it comes to technology in general?   Amber Mac  17:54 I probably am one of those authors. I've written two best selling books and and I always tell people don't buy my books, because they're outdated after a year. We'll be honest about these conversations in terms of what is possible, you know, I wrote power friending, a best seller in 2010. And that was all about the potential of the internet to be this magical place to bring people together. And then all of a sudden, I see algorithms dividing us and being a threat to democracy. And I think wow, you know, I really was kind of naive, with outsmarting your kids online, I think it is possible for adults in the room to be able to have a good handle on what's happening in the technology space. But I probably am less optimistic than when I wrote that book in terms of adults being able to outsmart their kids because they're growing up again with this technology at their fingertips. And they're not naive about the impacts of that technology as well.   Dan Seguin  18:50 Now, I know you've done some research on EVs, electric vehicles, what are the biggest challenges for mass adoption? Does the social need exist finally, to make them a success?   Amber Mac  19:05 I certainly know that there are many people in Canada who are EV specialists whose knowledge is well beyond where I'm at. But the question I constantly have over and over again, is the infrastructure question, I had a chance to listen to some past episodes of your podcast. And I know that you have talked about this a number of times as far as what infrastructure is in place, and even what roles do governments especially municipal governments play as far as that infrastructure and the construction industry and beyond? So, from my perspective, one of the issues that I see is that there's an assumption from some people that every Canadian has a driveway and a garage where they can put these EVs. Now I live in downtown Toronto right off Queen Street. In a detached home. I don't have a driveway. We don't have a parking spot. I am the perfect EV buyer. And yet I cannot actually legitimately have an EV because I don't have a place to plug it in. And I think we're very slowly rolling out the infrastructure even in on the highways in Ontario, I know there have have been some movement to be able to have EV chargers, and some of the on route stops, and we're doing more and more, but it just feels like we're kind of trickling out these solutions is not happening fast enough. So my biggest complaint would be from an infrastructure standpoint, we at some point have to make it possible in the next few years for every single person who needs to plug in an electric vehicle to be able to plug it in, or else we're never gonna meet the goals that we want to meet. And it won't be realistic, that people have that choice that we think that they have right now.   Dan Seguin  20:44 Okay, so on a personal note, are you looking for an EV? And if so, what is your criteria to take the plunge?   Amber Mac  20:53 I would have bought an electric vehicle years ago, if I had some place to plug it in. The reality of my situation is that I just don't have the infrastructure to be able to do that. Now, on a street, one street over from us in downtown Toronto, there now is, I believe one or two chargers that have been put up as a test pilot in the city where people can charge their cars. It's just that's just not enough. You know, we have dozens and dozens of houses on on my street alone. And most people aren't going to walk over a street and then fight for two charging spots. So my desire to own an electric vehicle, unfortunately, is hindered by the reality of a total infrastructure failure. And I'm not sure how we're going to be able to do better if we don't react quickly in the near future.   Dan Seguin  21:43 What sort of smart tech do you have in your home? Does energy efficiency factor into your buying decision when it comes to your home?   Amber Mac  21:53 Well, one of the things that I've really been focused on in 2021, and as part of my company, Amber Mac media, we've committed to this in 2022, is that we're going to be focused more and more on sustainable tech. And even in 2020, and 2019. We actually bought this house I mentioned before, in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, and we did an entire makeover of 140 year old historic home and turn it into a smart home. And it was a really fun project to be able to do this because we were able to focus on sustainable tech. So we have everything in the home from heat pumps, to smart thermostats to energy efficient faucets. And so at almost every level and every point of purchase in the home, we made a decision based on the sustainability factor. Now most Canadians are not going to have maybe the luxury to do it at that level. But let's face it, there's lots of sustainable tech out there. And I do believe more and more, especially as people spend more time at home, that that is going to be something that is driving their decision making. And that's why I am pushing and committing more to this in the next year and years ahead.   Dan Seguin  23:06 Next step up aren't Net Zero homes or renewable home generation are those on your radar?   Amber Mac  23:13 They absolutely are. And I think when we think about the term net zero homes, I mean, all of it is so exciting. And there's so many incredible innovations in this space. At the same time, we have an affordability crisis when it comes to homes in this country. And one of the things that I just don't want to see in the future. And I have to also try to avoid this as someone who covers the sector is to push for solutions that aren't equitable. And so when we think about the future of say, a net zero home, we want that to be something that could be a possibility for every Canadian. And yet right now we have so many issues in terms of that affordability piece that make that almost an impossibility. So we have a long way to go on that front. And it will be exciting when we see the possibility for every homeowner to be able to afford to buy sustainable tech, whether it's because of government rebates, or companies developing technology that just isn't as expensive as what we're seeing today.   Dan Seguin  24:15 Now, this is top of mind for a lot of people. What's your take on remote work? Is it here to stay?   Amber Mac  24:24 Oh, boy. Okay, so I am just fascinated on a daily basis about this topic. Because I'm looking at the research I'm reading what people are saying, in cities and in rural areas all over the world. And all signs points pretty much in the same direction that even if people can safely go back to work a lot of people especially parents, and families, they do not want to go back into an office five days a week. And yet at the same time, I do often talk to people who were who are leaders in the business community Who are so convinced and maybe blinded by, you know what they're hearing that people want to be in the office, it's important for collaboration. You know, we have a small team here, but I have one woman who's worked for us for a couple of years, who I've only seen twice, probably face to face during pandemic times, a woman who works for us in Cape Breton, who I really have maybe only met once in person. I mean, remote work for so many of us in the tech sector has been a reality for decades. And so I think this is an exciting trend that we need to embrace, especially when we think about the future of the planet and commute times and, and the habit that reeks on the world. And I think people are naive to think that most people want to go into a little cubicle with fluorescent lights and spend their days there.   Dan Seguin  25:47 Okay, aside from a cubicle, what are the barriers for it to become the norm after this pandemic?   Amber Mac  25:55 Well, I think one of the most important things that we need to be able to tackle when it comes to the future of remote work is that we need leaders who believe that this is important to the future of their company, or important to the future of recruiting people or the planet, we need leaders who are able to understand one key thing and that key thing is trust. And you have to believe that you can build trust in a virtual environment, I am the first person to say I do think that that is possible. It does take some effort. And it does take some work to do just that. But I think we're naive, again, to think that it is only face to face relationships that can be effective and help to grow a business. I think there are many benefits of remote work that leaders need to embrace. But those leaders who tend to often not embrace remote work, I find they tend to be the leaders who are a little more power hungry. And I like the idea of everybody under one roof. So that can keep an eye on what people are doing. But that is not the way to rule, especially if you're trying to recruit young millennials, or generation Z.   Dan Seguin  27:01 Okay, I'm curious, what tech can't You Live Without when you work remotely?   Amber Mac  27:06 I love that question. So I have this theory that has not been tested. But I have a theory that your virtual work setup. So kind of what we're doing right now is much more important than people think when it comes to things like virtual video, whether it's a zoom call, or a team's call, or you're doing a television interview, whatever that might be. The technology that I can't live without is really that technology that allows me to create a frictionless experience when I'm talking to someone through video, that means I don't have audio issues, or no lighting issues. I'm not you know, in a dark corner of my room where you can't see me and you think I look sketchy and you don't trust me, all of those things that we can do with technology to be able to build trust in this virtual environment. I think we underestimate the potential of those. So the technology that I can't live without, whether it's here in my studio or at home, it's just some basic tech, like a ring light for my desk, USB microphone, those things that help again, with this virtual environment and have made the pandemic a little bit easier because we've been able to build those relationships more efficiently.   Dan Seguin  28:17 Going through your list of accomplishments, Amber, and there are many, what is something you want to accomplish that you haven't yet?   Amber Mac  28:27 Well, I have a lot of things that I want to do in the future. And, you know, I've been in the tech sector for a while now. And I'm excited to continue to demystify technology for Canadians and people around the world. But there are things that I do want to focus on beyond the technology sector. One of those things, perhaps has nothing to do at all with technology. But I've just celebrated my 20th Sober anniversary where I haven't had a drink of alcohol and 20 years. And I do believe that there's this movement that's happening right now with people who have chosen to abstain from alcohol for one reason or another. I'm kind of excited to eventually to create a community around those people. Because I grew up in a place in rural Prince Edward Island where not drinking wasn't a choice. And I do want to show that next generation that there are plenty of people who've chosen sobriety who have been successful, and that we do exist out there. So it's not the right choice for everyone to choose to drink.   Dan Seguin  29:22 Now the energy sector is looking to attract more women in STEM science, tech, engineering and mathematics. What advice would you give companies and or decision makers?   Amber Mac  29:34 Well, it's interesting. I've been doing a little bit of work with actual which is based in Ottawa. Their CEO Jennifer Flanagan is an incredible resource in terms of understanding how we can get the next generation especially young girls interested in STEM and and through our conversations. I've learned many things that perhaps I wasn't aware about in the past and one of those things is often retaining women in the technology sector. If there's a big hurdle to do that, because often they feel as though they're not really accepted, or they don't feel comfortable, you know, they're in an environment where there aren't a lot of other women. So I think it's important for leaders to understand how important it is to create a culture in your organization that really embraces this idea of having a diverse workforce. And that includes, of course, gender diversity. And I think especially in the tech sector, we haven't done a really great job of that within most organizations. So that's kind of a first step. And there, there's some really great work happening right now to teach young girls about embracing technology and careers in technology. But we still have a long way to go. One of the things that Jennifer had said to me recently, is that oftentimes, boys actually choose technology as extra curricular activity. So they may do after school robotics classes, and they tend to sort of have an edge when they get out of school when it comes to having embraced technology. So there are things that we can do to encourage that next generation to get interested. And that means having more and more programs that expose young girls to technology as an option, even just as a hobby so that they develop interest in that space.   Dan Seguin  31:15 Now, how about you close us off with some rapid fire questions? Are you ready?   Amber Mac  31:21 I am ready. Let's do it.   Dan Seguin  31:23 Okay, Amber, what is your favorite word? What's my favorite word?   Amber Mac  31:28 Yes.   Dan Seguin  31:29 What is the one thing you can't live without Amber?   Amber Mac  31:33 One thing that I can't live with out, I don't want to say obvious things like my family. But I will say my whip band. I love my whip. And I love seeing my daily stats and data around my health.   Dan Seguin  31:44 What is something that challenges you?   Amber Mac  31:48 Twitter? Not that it's hard for me to use Twitter. It's just hard not to reply to some people.   Dan Seguin  31:55 Now, if you could have one superpower, what would it be?   Amber Mac  32:00 Invisibility?   Dan Seguin  32:04 If you could turn back time now and talk to your 18 year old self? What would you tell her?   Amber Mac  32:10 I would probably tell my 18 year old self that all was going to be okay. And the lessons I learned as a young child growing up in rural Prince Edward Island, were going to come in very, very handy in the real world.   Dan Seguin  32:27 And lastly, Amber, what do you currently find most interesting in the technology sector.   Amber Mac  32:35 I am a very curious person. And so there are so many things that I find interesting in the technology sector. But the thing I probably find the most interesting right now in terms of what's happening in this the future is the push for businesses to be more socially responsible. And it's going to be fascinating in 2022, to see how that pans out, you know, some people believe who are in the business world, that a company's only purpose is to actually create profit for individuals and the company at large. But I think what we're going to see in the future is that businesses in the tech space are going to have more responsibility than simply creating profits. So there's going to be some who struggle with this, but there are some that will embrace this and see it as almost a superpower for success.   Dan Seguin  33:25 Now, Amber, we've reached the end of another episode of the thinkenergy podcast. I'd like to thank you very much for joining us today. I hope you had a lot of fun.   Amber Mac  33:34 I had so much fun. Thanks so much for having me.   Dan Seguin  33:37 Until next time, I'm Dan Seguin. Thanks for tuning in for another episode of The think energy podcast. Don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review where ever 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.

Cost, inventory, and access to charging stations are major barriers when making the jump to an electric vehicle. In fact, 71% of Uber drivers across Canada said they're interested in making the switch, but these factors are holding them back. Uber's Matthew Price joins Dan Séguin and Rebecca Schwartz for an in-depth look at what the company is doing to help make electric vehicles more accessible to their drivers—and Canadians. Related Content and Links Matthew Price's Linkedin profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewprice3/ --- 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, and my co host Rebecca Schwartz, as we explore both traditional and unconventional facets of the energy industry. In this episode, we'll do a deep dive with Uber and discover how they plan to reduce their carbon footprint. I'm Dan Seguin.   Rebecca Schwartz  00:39 And I'm Rebecca Schwartz. Hey, Dan, have you ever noticed how quickly language changes seemingly overnight? In 2021 words, like Doom-scrolling and adulting were added to the dictionary? While, words like salty were updated with new definitions.   Dan Seguin  00:55 Wait, what salty? What the blank does salty mean now?   Rebecca Schwartz  01:00 Well, it's a term for being bitter, angry or resentful. Like, Dan, don't be salty!   Dan Seguin  01:07 I don't think so. I'm in a great mood. Cool. Anyways, what about popular phrases? The perfect example: It wasn't that long ago, we used to say, let's call a cab. Now it's, let's order an Uber. Between 2017 and 2019, nearly 4 billion rides were taken using Uber in the US and Canada alone. In fact, Uber is the largest mobility platform in the world.   Rebecca Schwartz  01:41 Well, as an avid user myself, there is no question that ride sharing companies like Uber have disrupted the transportation space, providing convenience, accessibility and affordability to riders in nearly every major city around the world. Collectively, ride sharing companies have transformed how we move and commute in our cities, to the point that some critics believe people are foregoing lower carbon forms of transportation, like public transit, biking and walking, resulting in 69% more climate pollution. And that's according to the Union of Concerned Scientists.   Dan Seguin  02:18 With the Canadian government's promise to be zero carbon by 2050. And transportation currently accounted for 28% of Canada's greenhouse gas emissions, there's another disruption and culture shift coming. Recently, Uber released its climate assessment and performance report to address how it plans to aggressively tackle climate change and the missions its business produces,   Rebecca Schwartz  02:44 adopting the mantra that with great power comes great responsibility. Uber is aiming to be an environmental leader and game changer in the mobility and ride sharing space. So here's today's big question: stating that it will be a zero emissions platform by 2040, what are some of the innovative strategies and incentives Uber is introducing to address its carbon footprint?   Dan Seguin  03:07 I'm really interested to talk about what those are in today's show with our very special guest, Matthew Price. Matthew is the general manager of Uber Canada. During Matthew's time at Uber, he helped lead its transformation in Europe, across 15 countries for some of Uber's most strategic cross functional programs. Bonjour Matthew, welcome to the show, perhaps you could start us off by telling us a bit more about yourself and your role at Uber,   Matthew Price  03:38 well, Bonjour and thank you for having me on today. So I'm Matthew price, proud Canadian sustainability enthusiast, and also the general manager of Uber Canada. I joined Uber back in 2015, based in Europe, so a front row seat to how this topic has evolved across that continent helping to implement many of Ubers early policies in terms of driving the green resolution there. And then the privilege then to come back to Canada in 2019. To take on this role, and you know, help Uber start its journey to Mission Zero in Canada. So in my role, I'm responsible for our vision and strategy, the overall performance of our business health of our team and you know, importantly, the customer experience both both riders and drivers.   Rebecca Schwartz  04:22 Thanks, Matthew. Now, can you tell us more about Uber green, and the uptake thus far by customers?   Matthew Price  04:28 Absolutely. So Uber green is our low emissions, right option, electric or hybrid. It is in 16 cities across Canada today. And as an Uber user, you can effectively select Uber green in your app. To request that hybrid or electric ride. It's $1 more than than your Uber X ride, but you're getting to experience something very different. We made a commitment at Uber to be fully emissions zero by 2030. And cities that have supportive policies and 2040 everywhere, globally. In this uber Green was one of our first actions to actually make the commitment a reality. And I will say, I do think, you know, we in ride sharing are really at the next frontier, and can have a real impact here in catalyzing this change. And let me just quickly tell you why. You know, as you might know, gas powered vehicles account for about three quarters of greenhouse gas emissions to transportation and cities today. But not all of those cars are created equal ride sharing drivers use their vehicles much more than your average car owner. And in fact, if, if a driver makes a switch to electric vehicle, you see three to four times greater emission savings compared to your average car. So if you think of the millions of drivers that we as Uber have on the streets across the world, if even a small portion of those drivers make the switch to Go Electric, that's a huge push to getting zero emission transportation off the ground. And importantly, contributing to the scale, that's going to be required to bring down the cost of vehicles and increase the availability of charging, which will we'll talk a lot more about here today.   Rebecca Schwartz  06:01 Alright, so has this resulted in an uptake for drivers to transition to electric vehicles?   Matthew Price  06:07 so drivers that come to our platform with electric vehicle, they have an opportunity to earn $1 more on any trip they take. And if it's an Uber green trip $1.50 More, which at scale is a significant increase in earnings, which, as we know, is really important when it comes to electric vehicles. Because these cars, these vehicles are still, you know, more expensive today than your your internal combustion vehicle. But at the same time, as I mentioned, there are real barriers here in terms of the cost and access to the vehicle and the availability of charging, which is why it's going to take partnership across the ecosystem to drive the uptake that we all want to see. And and I'll give you example of one of the things that we're doing there to make that happen. And I'm really proud to say we just announced yesterday, the following, which is we did a survey of drivers in Canada, 71% of them are interested in switching to electric vehicle, which is big, but you also hear from them that charging is a significant barrier. So we announced a partnership yesterday with Green Lots, which is a member of the shell group to actually create three new charging stations in Vancouver. That's one of the leading EV markets in North America for Uber. And effectively this is Ubers first exclusive partnership across North America to give drivers and delivery people access to fast charging, and access to fast charging at a discounted rate that will make it cheaper than charging at their home. So it's a pilot. It's a blueprint, but it is the type of thing that we need to replicate across Canada and globally to drive that uptake in terms of drivers transitioning to electric vehicles.   Dan Seguin  07:38 That's really interesting, Matthew. Now, Uber recently published its climate assessment and performance report. What were the biggest takeaways from the report? And was there anything that surprised you from the data?   Matthew Price  07:53 Yeah, let me let me talk you through a couple of the key insights in that report. So the first one is that the efficiency of trips with Uber actually improve as ridership grows, let me let me explain what that means, which is from 2017 to the end of 2019. Our average active much monthly ridership, it grew by 36%. But carbon intensity declined by 6%. If you look at that, that three year period, the efficiency improvement results in about a half million metric tons of avoided CO2 and 56 million gallons of gasoline conserved. Interestingly, though, the performance is even more efficient in cities. So you know, again, if you look at the 2019, the carbon intensity of rides in our top 10 metros across North America was about five and a half percent lower than Uber average. And even lower if you look at the the largest cities. But the last thing I'll say there is that we found and reported there that Uber drivers, on average, use hybrid vehicles about five and a half times more than your average car. And that speaks to what I mentioned before in terms of, you know, transitioning one Uber driver into an electric or in this case, a hybrid vehicle has an outsized impact in terms of taking, taking dirty miles and putting clean miles on our streets. I will say the other thing in there is we've referenced a number of policies that we think are going to be important to to kind of accelerate the, the revolution here towards green. Things like increasing the quality and availability of local transit, micro mobility infrastructure, we should talk a bit about that road pricing that includes all vehicles, increasing drivers access to cleaner and electric vehicles, as well as charging availability. And that all really helped inform the actions that we've taken as an organization to work towards the 2030/2040 goal.   Rebecca Schwartz  09:54 Okay, so as a global company with a global impact. I've read that you're developing some innovative strategies to be a zero emission platform by 2040. Can you tell us what are some of those strategies and how you guys plan to get there?   Matthew Price  10:10 Would love to and I touched on a few but but let me let me elaborate. So the way we think about it is, you know, commitments, one thing has to be coupled with action. And there's four key actions that that we're taking. So, you know, the first I've already spoken about, which is expanding ubergreen, you know, and that's gonna give consumers those of us that don't own electric vehicle today an opportunity to experience what it's like, which I think is going to be really important to letting people experience the magic that is an electric vehicle and kind of have that motivate their own choices moving forward. The second one is helping drivers then transition to electric vehicles, we definitely don't have as many on the streets as we need today to service the demand that's there for green. I mentioned green lights already as one way we're doing this. Another instance here, for example, is we have a partnership with General Motors to offer all eligible Uber drivers, effectively the employee discount on a Chevy bolt, which is important to bring down the upfront cost, which which we know is high. And you know, this is important, in addition to federal funding that is that is currently available. We are also investing in our multimodal network. So I mentioned this a moment ago, what that means is, it's going to take more than just offering electric vehicles to fully get to our sustainability goals, we also need to drive mode shifting, which means we need to integrate lime into our app, we've actually done this in Ottawa, where you can now get E bikes and scooters through the Uber app. And we need more partnerships with local transit authorities to give you information and help you figure out how to combine Uber with transit to get to where you need to go. And the last thing I'll say here is we need to be accountable. The Climate report we just talked about is one step in that direction. But it's really just the start, we want to bring our data to the public to the table to discuss how we do this because this is a team sport, we cannot do this alone, it is going to take private and public industry coming together and working towards what I think we all think is a common goal.   Dan Seguin  12:11 Now, Matthew, what are some of the biggest barriers and challenges you've identified in your roadmap to zero emissions?   Matthew Price  12:19 So I've touched on a couple, let me quickly reiterate those and I'll add a couple more. So I mean, when when we talk to drivers, again, 70% of what you're interested, it is the cost and the access to the vehicle, keeping in mind that the inventory is not there today for people who want the vehicles. And then it's the the access to charging. In fact, there's a study that came out of California not long ago, that shows unfortunately, one in four electric vehicle drivers switch back to a gas car because of how painful it is to charge which is a problem. So So you know, against those I mentioned earlier that, you know, part of evergreen is about people getting to experience what an electric vehicle is, today electric vehicle is is often, you know, a luxury for more wealthy households, often people kind of buying their second or third vehicle and having it be electric. But the data shows that, you know, every electric vehicle on our platform, on average touches 100 different riders. So you know, that gives a lot of people the opportunity to experience an electric ride. And the reason that's important is that scale is going to help kind of catalyze the shift, which means the scale will lead to more demand for vehicles and over time lower battery costs that bring down the cost. The scale off also offers the demand, that's going to be required to get the charging infrastructure to be installed and have the utilization required to make the economics work for those for those asset owners. So think that's really important. I mentioned earlier that it's going to take more than just private cars. So we need multimodal, we need the regulatory framework in place to roll out multimodal. And the one of the things I'll add to this, it's also about education. There's a lot of people, you know, who don't fully understand what an electric vehicle is what it's like to drive, one of the things we recently did was was rolled out an EV calculator, which means you can now go on and compare as an Uber driver, the cost of a current internal combustion versus electric vehicle through the lens of a driver, including all the subsidies and local benefits available to get a sense for what your total cost of ownership is and what it takes to get it on par. So as I've as I said here a couple times, early days on this journey, I think we know what the barriers are. We don't know how to address all of them, but we also know we're not gonna be able to do this alone.   Rebecca Schwartz  14:40 So Matthew, the integration of multimodal network is innovative, including the incorporation of public transit tickets, lime scooters, and bike rentals and even carpooling to help commuters get from point A to point B. So can you touch on these and tell us why this was the right step in Ubers evolution?   Matthew Price  15:00 Absolutely. And let me let me first talk a little bit more about transit. And I think about it like this today. Most people when they leave their house, they grab their keys, and I hop into their car. And we need to give Canadians something that for the first time is sufficiently convenient that they might consider doing something different, which needs to be more than just offering Uber X and Uber green. But it also needs to be offering new transit options, electric bike and scooter options to effectively help create, you know, a suite of solutions, that makes it more likely you're going to forego the car. And that's important because that car sits idle 95% of the time. And the other 5% is often in meeting carbon emissions with only one person in the vehicle. So the new thing we've done, just in the last few weeks, is rolled out for now just in the GTA, a product called Uber plus transit. And it's a combination of two of our existing products. Uber X and journey planning and how it works is when it convenient routes available, we will actually now help you find an Uber X to the closest transit stop, and then give you the information about how to get to your final destination using public transit. So it's you know, we find that unique ways to combine the two to get you where you want to go, sometimes faster, oftentimes cheaper. And we've integrated this with public transit across the GTA, we're watching the data very closely to see see how it performs. And definitely something we want to roll out across this country to continue to deepen the integration with with public transit, I think it's really, really important as part of the solution. And I think every everyone's you know, everyone, when going from point A to point B, you know, they're they're solving for a slightly different set of things. For some people, it's about what's the green assumption for some people, that's what's the fastest option for some people, it's what's the cheapest option. And you know, I want to I want to offer Canadians ways to solve for all of that, and ways to do it in the most environmentally conscious way.   Dan Seguin  17:00 Okay, Matthew, wondering if you could expand on key takeaways from your operations and the overall impact from this past year during shelter in place, and the golden age of food delivery?   Matthew Price  17:14 Yeah, I mean, we often get this question in terms of, you know, look, you made this, this this commitment to be zero emissions in late 2020. You know, why then? you know, when and, you know, for us COVID-19 was not a barrier, a challenge, it was actually the catalyst to do this. And the reason and we all saw this was for a period of time there, when we looked at our window, we saw our cities breathing again, for the first time, and if you look at the data, carbon emissions, were actually down for a period of time, as we were all sheltering in place. You know, as the industry leader in Canada, we knew we had an obligation, we have responsibility to take advantage of a moment like that, and figuring out how we can build back better, very much aligned to, you know, the leadership, our Canadian government, shown, very much aligned to the Paris Climate Agreement. And that really spawned the commitment around sustainability. And, and the beginning of that, of course, very focused throughout the pandemic, on helping Canadians in need move safely. In terms of helping, you know, drivers find a flexible earning opportunity that for many people was was necessary during, you know, a really big economic crisis. But, you know, we kept the sustainability aspirations front and center. And I'm really pleased, this is one of the ways that we are building back better. And, you know, in some sense of silver lining for what's been a really, really difficult time for all of us over the last 18 months.   Rebecca Schwartz  18:44 Okay, let's talk about government and industry partnerships, including Ubers advocacy for key policy reform, what are some of the changes you'd like to see in these new collaborations for the transportation sector?   Matthew Price  18:57 There's no silver bullet here. And, you know, it's going to take all parties coming together, you know, solving for our common goal as, as Canadians and what is the biggest challenge of our generation, in terms of how to make this this kind of low carbon future a reality. There's a long list of things here at the federal level, at the provincial level, at the municipal level. I'll say to that, I think are particularly important to, you know, how we catalyze a lot of what we've talked about here from using ride sharing as a way to share this. You know, one, we've talked about it, we think Uber green is really important in terms of, you know, helping people experience electric, which will help people upgrade to their own electric vehicle will help create some of the the demand required to bring down the cost to make this happen. There's ways that cities can incentivize the use of Uber green. You know, what we've seen in a number of cities, Vancouver's done it. In fact, Pearson airports done it, is they've actually reduced the per trip fee on zero emission vehicles, which makes it for you as a rider cheaper to take to take a green truck. And I do think, you know, there's there's an opportunity to do more of that, to help to to, to, you know, enable that part of what's going to be a key part of the the transition. I think the other thing is, you know, there's real opportunities for us to work as a, you know, ride sharing and taxi industry to think about how to do this in the right way. And you know, very much encouraging cities across the country to create a vehicle for higher working group, bring the right stakeholders to the table, that's going to be all levels of government, it's going to be the private transport companies, taxi companies, utilities, others, and let's talk about things like what are the barriers? And really specific barriers in that specific city? what are best practices we can bring from other jurisdictions? What's the roadmap to get there? There's no silver bullet, as I said, off the top. But, you know, it's these types of things, often with government leading, supported by organizations like ours that will get us to where we need to be.   Dan Seguin  21:10 And Matthew, does Canada's commitment to zero carbon by 2050 make collaboration easier compared to other countries?   Matthew Price  21:18 I think the answer to that is absolutely. We need that constructive relationship we talked about with local government, there's no other way to do it. And very much seen that and I'm just really pleased and proud as a Canadian to see our government leading in the space. You know, partnerships, like what I've talked about here with Greenlaw are going to be key. The way we kind of take that blueprint and expanded across the country is in part with government helping to pave the way.   Dan Seguin  21:45 Now in Canada, more than 3 million people use Uber regularly across 18 cities. I'm curious about Ottawa, what is your data telling you about our mobility habits?   Matthew Price  21:58 happy to share some data on on Ottawa, one of our early Canadian cities that we that we brought Uber to, I'll tell you the following. So most most trips in Ottawa happened during commuting times. 8am 4pm To be specific, and of course, on weekends. I can tell you that the people of Ottawa had a lot of fun on Halloween, a really big spike over Halloween weekend. And some of the top destinations in Ottawa are the Rideau center ByWard Market area, Elgin street downtown, via rail station and TD place stadium. Ottawa is a really, really important city for us. And one, you know, in particular, where we are excited to partner with all levels of government and, you know, organizations such as hydro Ottawa, to to make this green future reality.   Rebecca Schwartz  22:51 Okay, Matthew, we're coming to the end. So how about we close off with some rapid fire questions? Are you ready? What is your favorite word?   Matthew Price  23:01 Oh, hello. Maybe that's my most frequent word. If nothing else,   Rebecca Schwartz  23:08 tell us one thing you absolutely cannot live without?   Matthew Price  23:11 music.   Rebecca Schwartz  23:13 What is something that challenges you?   Matthew Price  23:15 I would say how to integrate work and life. I love both sides of that equation so much. There's only so much time in a day and how you balance the two continues to be a real challenge for me.   Rebecca Schwartz  23:26 If you could have one superpower, what would it be?   Matthew Price  23:29 I would love the ability to pause time and lengthen those kinds of special moments are busy workdays to get a bit more.   Rebecca Schwartz  23:39 Now let's say you were talking to your 18 year old self, what would you tell him?   Matthew Price  23:44 Life is short. And there's no substitute for passion and doing things that you love.   Rebecca Schwartz  23:49 And lastly, what do you find most interesting in your sector right now.   Matthew Price  23:54 This one probably won't be a surprise given the conversation we just had. But I think ride sharing it's fundamentally changed how people move around our cities. I think the next frontier is for ride sharing to fundamentally catalyze this electric revolution.   Dan Seguin  24:07 Well, Matthew, we've reached the end of another episode of The think energy podcast. Thank you so much for joining us today. I hope you had a lot of fun.   Matthew Price  24:17 I did indeed. It was great to meet you both. Thank you for having me on and all the good work you're doing to to help make Ottawa a green city.   Dan Seguin  24:28 Thanks for tuning in for another episode of The thinkenergy podcast. Don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review whereever you're listening. And to find out more about today's guest 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.

This week, we have a special holiday episode of the ThinkEnergy podcast. Inspired by one of our favourite Christmas movies, A Christmas Carol, we're here to present some podcast “ghosts” of past, present and future. Get ready to buckle up because we're going on an adventure to recap three of our top episodes from 2021. Related Content & Links:  Second Harvest - https://secondharvest.ca  --- Transcript: Dan Seguin  00:53 Ho, ho, ho, everyone. Welcome back. This is the ThinkEnergy podcast and I'm Dan Seguin.   Rebecca Schwartz  01:00 And I'm Rebecca Schwartz.   Dan Seguin  01:02 This week, we have a very special holiday episode of The ThinkEnergy podcast, inspired by one of my favorite Christmas movies, A Christmas Carol. We're here to present some podcast ghosts of the past, the present, and future.   Rebecca Schwartz  01:23 Ooh, podcast ghost - sounds spooky. Should we be worried? What do you have in store for us, Dan?   Dan Seguin  01:30 That just building some suspense for you. But get ready to buckle up? Because we're going on an adventure to recap three of the top episodes from this year.   Rebecca Schwartz  01:42 I'm ready. Dan, where should we start?   Dan Seguin  01:44 Let's start with the Ghost of Christmas Past. In the movie, the ghost represents memory. So let's take a trip down memory lane to our episode on how Ontario used to burn coal as an energy source: A reminder of how far we've come in the energy industry to clean up our energy supply mix. Back in 2003 25% of electricity in Ontario came from coal plants. Did you know cold emissions were a major source of air pollution that contributed to 53 smog days in Ontario alone in 2005. That same year, my great City of Ottawa had 25. For those that may not know smog days would be declared in the province on days when the air wasn't as safe to breathe. Due to the amount of toxins in the air in 2014. Ontario was the first jurisdiction in North America to completely eliminate coal as a source of electricity production. According to air quality, Ontario, the province phased out of coal has been considered to have achieved the most significant results of any climate change initiative in North America to date. Now, today 94% of electricity generated in Ontario is emission free, and those smog advisories are all but a thing of the past. There's no doubt that Ontario has been a leader in fighting climate change and investing in cleaner energy sources. By 2030. Canada will phase out traditional coal fired electricity in the country altogether, striving to have 90% of electricity from non emitting sources, and simultaneously cutting carbon pollution from the electricity sector by 12 point 8 million tons.   Rebecca Schwartz  03:48 This is a great reminder. What did our guest or should I say ghost have to say about this transition away from coal in this episode?   Dan Seguin  03:56 I'm glad you asked Rebecca. Here's what Gideon Foreman had to say:   Gideon Forman  04:02 In terms of the impacts. The biggest impact that we talked about now is the climate impact. The coal plants at their height were the equivalent of millions of cars on our roads. When we took the coal plants out it was like removing 6 million cars from Ontario's roads. So they were a very, very significant source of greenhouse gases. And they also produced other things that were toxic things like mercury, for example, and arsenic. So they were also a significant source of human health problems. They made asthma worse, what they call the particulate matter in smog. Some of that came from coal plants and particulate matter is a factor in lung cancer. So a number of different ailments were connected to the coal plants.   Dan Seguin  04:47 And here's what he said about the case for eliminating coal fired electricity in Ontario.   Gideon Forman  04:53 The Case for closing the coal plants was that they were just a massive, massive source of greenhouse gas emissions and other contributors to pollution, things like nitrous oxides and sulfur oxide, sulfur dioxide. So they were contributing to climate change, they were contributing to acid rain, and they were contributing to human illness on a very big scale. And the other reason that it made sense to close them was it was something doable. In Ontario, because they were publicly owned, there was an opportunity to do it in quite a rapid and efficient manner. You know, in many places, coal plants are privately owned, in the United States, for example. And so if they're privately owned, it's very difficult to close them quickly. There's all sorts of issues around compensation and government has to step in. And it can be very complicated legally. But in Ontario, all the coal plants are owned by the government of Ontario. So the government of Ontario could close them basically through the stroke of a pen. And that's what happened, it was over a number of years. But that's what happened, the Ontario government decided that by 2014, they would no longer be coal used to produce electricity in the province. And that's what happened. So it was a matter of something that would have huge impact. And that was doable. That was kind of the thinking behind it. In terms of backlash, there wasn't a lot of backlash. There were some who raised concerns about the transition, loss of jobs for workers in the coal plants. There were some questions about electricity supply. But for the most part, I think there was a lot of public acceptance that we had to get off coal, this was something really good to do from an air quality point of view. And increasingly, from a climate change point of view. In terms of who drove the coal phase out, a lot of it was pushed by health professionals, the Ontario Medical Association, doctors, including some of the doctors that I work with, in physicians for the environment, nurses, Ontario, public health officials, medical officers of health, these sorts of people and family physicians, these sorts of people saw firsthand the effect of smog of bad air on people's lives. And they talked openly about it. And so was very much driven, I think, by the health professionals. I remember one time, Dan, when I was working with the physicians for environment, we we arranged a meeting to meet with the Minister of Environment for the province of Ontario and I brought in doctors I brought in nurses and we had an opportunity to talk across the table with the minister. And it was just fascinating for the Minister to see firsthand the effect of coal on people's lives in a very direct way. I remember one of our doctors from Kingston. She said, you know, Minister, there are times when the weather when the air quality is so poor, that my patients can't go outside, and I really worry for them. And if you close the coal plants, this would make a huge difference in the lives of my patients. And you could see the minister really connecting with that at a very human level. So it wasn't just an abstraction for our doctors. And so I think that was one of the driving forces behind the coal plant phase out.   Rebecca Schwartz  08:03 Boy, am I ever glad that smog warnings are now vague and distant memory. I'm so grateful for everyone who stood up for eliminating coal. It makes me excited for how much more we can do for a cleaner energy.   Dan Seguin  08:16 Now, are you ready for us to dive into the next one? This time, I have a podcast ghosts of Christmas present for you. Now this ghost represents generosity and goodwill. So the episode we'll be revisiting is The Birds and the Bees about Pollinator Meadows, where we chat about a sustainable approach to building out electrical infrastructure, one that supports the vegetation and wildlife. Did you know that across North America, the populations of Monarch butterflies, bees and other pollinators are in a steep decline due to herbicides, pesticides, climate change, and a reduction in natural pollinator habitats. pollinators are responsible for a third of the world's food supply, so they are extremely vital to our existence in Canada. There are more than 1000 species of pollinating animals that are responsible for billions of dollars worth of Canadian farm produce flowers, and ecosystems that rely on pollination. In short, without pollinators, food supply would suffer drastically. It may seem like an unlikely Union, but utilities like hydro Ottawa are ideally suited to restore these environments, thanks to a number of utility corridors and properties in their service territories, not to mention the kilometers of power lines and right aways along roadsides. Moreover, vegetation along utility corridors are compatible with these types of vegetation necessary to support pollinators. In 2019, hydro Ottawa began civil construction of its largest ever municipal transformer station in the south end of Ottawa, situated on 24 acres of land since the new transformer station requires only five acres of property, hydro Ottawa partnered with the city of Ottawa Rito Valley Conservation Authority and the Canadian Wildlife Federation to create one of the largest pollinator meadows of its kind in Eastern Ontario, adjacent to this future station. The agreement means that 15 acres will be dedicated to a pollinator meadow, which is scheduled for seeding. In the spring of 2021, a four acre tree reforestation area was reforested in 2020, with 2750 trees, thanks to the Rita River Conservation Authority. Tracy Etwell, a restoration ecologist with the Canadian Wildlife Federation, and Megan McDonald, Lake planning and shoreline stewardship coordinator for the Rideau Valley Conservation Authority. Join me for this episode to share what goes into a successful pollinator meadow and how we can as an industry, and as ordinary citizens generously help the movement by building more pollinator Meadows.   Tracy Etwell  11:39 Utilities are a key player in our pollinator restoration efforts as they maintain over 160,000 kilometers of transmission lines 1000s of generation stations across Canada, which has huge potential for pollinator habitat restoration, also their linear design are relatively easy for pollinators to find. Since utilities need to control the woody species over the long term along these facilities. It provides a great place for the wildflowers and grasses to grow. And it provides a great opportunity for utilities to demonstrate environmental leadership and provide the habitat. That's that's a win win for the utilities and the pollinators.  So the Canadian Wildlife Federation is committed to supporting pollinators for both our diverse biodiversity and our food supply. As you mentioned, many of the nutritious plants eat such as fruits and vegetables rely on insect pollination, and 90% of the world's flowering plants rely on insect pollination. So it's critical that as a global society, we support these insect pollinators. Now our project is focused on a variety of support such as technical expertise in building these meadows, increasing the native seed supply in Ontario, and providing case studies of the costs and benefits of restoring meadow habitat. We work with interested managers to develop their respective projects. And we've also only recently formed the Canadian branch of rights of way within the US rights of way habitat working group to enhance our network so that we have more access to resources, case studies and best practices.   Rebecca Schwartz  13:04 I love that utilities are working together with ecologists and stewardship coordinators to think outside the box and to discover new approaches that are environmentally sustainable. Birds and bees, while they may be small creatures, make our world a better place in so many ways. And I'm so glad that we're looking out for them. Thanks for another great recap, Dan. Tell us where are you leaving us for the podcast Ghost of Christmas Future.   Dan Seguin  13:31 So in the movie, The Ghost of Christmas Future represents something pretty grim. The fear of death.   Rebecca Schwartz  13:39 I forgot about that. I'm not sure I'm prepared for this now.   Dan Seguin  13:43 Nah, don't worry. The closest we've come to that theme on our podcast is probably our crisis communications episode. But I'd like to take a more uplifting approach and share the final recap that looks to the future through a positive lens. For this reason, my next and last podcast Ghost of Christmas Future is unlocking a sustainable energy future with today's youth. Much like the podcast Ghost of Christmas Present., we celebrate environmental stewardship in this episode, but also the exciting possibilities for upcoming generations to unlock.   Rebecca Schwartz  14:24 Ah, now we're talking let's go.   Dan Seguin  14:27 With every new generation that comes of age, there's a fresh perspective introduced to the table. Young people offer incredible opportunities for change with their new ideas and verve. However, part of the challenge for young people around the world is finding a platform from which their voice can be heard and valued. Without well established networks and resources. Young people can easily be stifled or forgotten. Thankfully, when it comes to the energy sector, climate change, and what's in store for the future, an organization by the name of student energy seeks to bridge that gap. Student energy is a global youth led non for profit organization that strives to empower young people to accelerate their sustainable energy transition. They connect young people to global changemakers and provide them access to decision making spaces, so that they have opportunities to play a part in their energy future. They started with three driven students who, in 2009, is set out to organize the first international student energy summit. Since then, it has expanded into a global organization, with programs engaging over 50,000 students from over 120 countries, alumni are going on to develop and implement renewable energy technologies, advise the United Nations and advocate for a clean energy future while working with some of the largest energy companies.  In this episode Shakti Ramkumar, Director of Communications and policy for student energy shares about how the energy industry utilities, and we, as individuals can support youth in establishing a sustainable energy future.   Shakti Ramkumar  16:34 I think there are two main things that we've recognized are distinct about young people's values when it comes to the energy transition that kind of makes this era of the environment and climate movement a little bit different than the previous era. One is the timeline in which young people expect action. We're seeing commitments now, finally, from companies and governments about aiming for net zero emissions by 2050. And young people who are climate activists are saying, Okay, that's good, but we need to see action right now. And that's why our Global Youth Energy Outlook actually works on a timeline leading up to 2030, not 2050, as we will have to take drastic climate action by then if we want to act in accordance with climate science. So as the years pass, and our global climate commitments are still not strong enough to meet the 1.5 degree target that we've set as a collective, the sense of urgency among young people, I think, is something that is really distinct. The second big value that we've seen from young people is that we're not siloed in our thinking, and that young people won't consider it a success, if we successfully decarbonize our energy system, are the harms that the current energy system has inflicted on people and communities, and haven't made sure that the benefits of the Clean Energy Transition are equitably distributed. So an emphasis on seeing energy as a mechanism through which we can build a more just and equitable society is something that is a really strong value for young people that I think it's something new, to the energy transition. And on the question of what can older generations do at student energy, we really value intergenerational collaboration, we have a lot to learn from people who have set up the energy system as it is now about the complexities and the nuances of producing distributing supplying energy. So we really value intergenerational collaboration. And there's three main things that I think older generations can do, particularly those with resources or power to make decisions. One very simple invest in young people that can look like financially supporting youth led organizations, youth led projects, or investing time through mentorship and guidance to is understand the value of youth, a lot of organizations, we want them to really think, are we meaningfully engaging with young people? What can we do to meaningfully and equitably engage with young people, not just on a tokenistic basis, but on a really kind of equal relationship. And this is something student energy often works with organizations to help them figure out especially if they're navigating youth engagement for the very first time. And the third thing, I would say is to create space for young people, older generations who have access to a large platform or an influential position. Think actively about how you can make young space for young people using that privilege. Whether this looks like asking an event organizer, why there are no young people on the panel and recommending some young people showing that panel, whether it looks like bringing up in a meeting, why we're not funding youth led organizations, or taking into consideration the youth voice when making that next strategy, that next plan. These are some tangible ways that older generations can really support young people.   Dan Seguin  19:48 How's that for inspiration? Feeling empowered Rebecca?   Rebecca Schwartz  19:52 Not gonna lie. I definitely feel fired up by all that Shakti had to say there. So how are you going to support me Dan? Fresh, hip, young mind that I am   Dan Seguin  20:02 Funny you should say that because I'm about to put you on the hot seat. You know how we always end off with some rapid fire questions? Well today, it's your turn to answer them. So, over to you. Now, Rebecca, what is your favorite word?   Rebecca Schwartz  20:23 My favorite word is Pomplamoose...like grapefruit just has a roll off the tongue type of thing.   Dan Seguin  20:33 Sure. What is the one thing you can't live without?   Rebecca Schwartz  20:37 My cats.   Dan Seguin  20:38 Now, what is something that challenges you?   Rebecca Schwartz  20:42 waking up in the morning   Dan Seguin  20:44 You're not a morning person?   Rebecca Schwartz  20:47 It eems not.   Dan Seguin  20:49 If you could have one superpower, what would it be?   Rebecca Schwartz  20:53 Definitely teleportation.   Dan Seguin  20:55 Now this one should be interesting. If you could turn back time and talk to your 18 year old self, what would you tell her?   Rebecca Schwartz  21:04 I would tell her to keep saying yes to opportunities and that you'll go way further that way.   Dan Seguin  21:10 And lastly, Rebecca, what's on your wish list this holiday season?   Rebecca Schwartz  21:15 Okay, so there's a little bit not so much a rapid fire question. But I'm really passionate about food security and reducing waste. So my wish would be that those who can give choose to give this holiday season and a really good place to start is an organization that I'm really fond of. It's called Second Harvest. And they're a Food Rescue charity with a dual mission of providing hunger relief and environmental protection. And they redistribute overstock surplus food across Canada and all provinces and territories. And they feed things like school programs, senior centers, food banks, and the like. So if you have an appetite to donate this holiday season, we'll include a link in our show notes.   Dan Seguin  21:57 Very cool. Well, dear listeners, we've reached the end of another episode of The think energy podcast. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you had a lot of fun and happy holidays.   Rebecca Schwartz  22:11 Happy holidays Dan, and to you our listeners. I sure hope you enjoyed this episode of The ThinkEnergy podcast. If so please head over to our iTunes SUBSCRIBE And leave us a review.   Dan Seguin  22:24 Now For show notes and bonus content visit thinkenergypodcast.ca. Also, be sure to tell your friends and colleagues about us.   Rebecca Schwartz  22:33 Thank you for listening

The energy sector, specifically electricity, is evolving at a rapid pace. But some folks may not realize that 94 per cent of Ontario's electricity is generated without producing any greenhouse gas emissions. That's pretty remarkable. So, what can customers expect from their local hydro utility today and in the future? How are they influenced by the government and its regulators? Teresa Sarkesian, the President and CEO of the Electricity Distributors Association, is here with us today to fill us in. Related Content & Links:  Teresa Sarkesian's Linkedin profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/teresa-sarkesian-53898613 EDA website: https://www.eda-on.ca/  --- Transcript: Dan Seguin  00:33 Hey, everyone, welcome back. This is the ThinkEnergy podcast. And in today's episode, we'll explore the need for our sector to have a collective voice. I'm Dan Seguin.   Rebecca Schwartz  01:03 And I'm Rebecca Schwartz. Dan, I don't know if you knew this, but before starting at Hydro Ottawa, I never really gave electricity much thought it was just kind of something that was always there. I didn't really know before starting here, just how much a local utility company did, how they are really on the frontlines every day keeping our complex electricity grid working and the lights on for all of us.   Dan Seguin  01:26 Or probably what a regulated industry is in Ontario, or that utilities don't even make the profit from selling energy.   Rebecca Schwartz  01:36 Definitely. And with Hydro Ottawa being a private company, it seems a little counterintuitive.   Dan Seguin  01:42 Yeah. Local hydro utilities, also known as local distribution companies distribute power from high voltage transmission lines: those big metal towers you see, to lower voltage hydro poles, so that it can be safe enough for more than 5 million residential, business, industrial and institutional customers across our province.   Rebecca Schwartz  02:07 Yep. And that includes the installation and maintenance of power lines, pools, underground cables, metering, implementing electrical vehicle infrastructure, and in some cases, even generating electricity themselves through renewable energy sources.   Dan Seguin  02:23 The energy sector specifically electricity is evolving at a rapid pace. But some folks may not realize that 94% of Ontario's electricity is generated without producing any greenhouse gas emissions. That's pretty remarkable. So here's today's big question: What can customers expect from their local hydro utility today? And in the future? How are they influenced by the government and its regulators?   Rebecca Schwartz  02:55 Our guest today is Teresa Sarkesian, and the President and CEO of Electricity Distributors Association. Teresa, welcome to the show. Perhaps you could start us off by telling us a little bit about yourself and what the electricity Distributors Association does.   Teresa Sarkesian  03:15 Well, thank you so much, Rebecca, and Dan, and I'm delighted to be here today. So a little bit about myself. I joined the EDA 12 years ago, after successive positions working in the public policy and advocacy space in the provincial government with a lobby firm and another industry association in the manufacturing sector. I've been president and CEO for over five years now, which I can't believe it really has flown by quickly. As for the association, the Electricity Distributors Association is the voice of Ontario's electricity distribution sector to decision makers at Queen's Park. We are the trusted and vital source for advocacy insight information for Ontario's LDCs. The municipally owned privately owned companies that safely and reliably deliver electricity to over 5 million Ontario homes, businesses and public institutions. Our mission is to provide our local distribution companies with a valued industry knowledge, networking opportunities and collective action vital to the business success of each member. And our vision is to shape the future for LDCs to be the premier service providers to Ontarians in the evolving energy system.   Dan Seguin  04:20 As the voice for more than 60 local distribution companies. Maybe you can talk about the power of local hydro campaign, its purpose, and what you're trying to convey to residents of Ontario,   Teresa Sarkesian  04:34 Of course, so in 2018, the EDA launched its innovative and award winning power of local hydro campaign, which is a public relations program designed to position and promote the local hydro utilities to government and the public. The goal of the campaign was to raise awareness and visibility of the sector and the value they provide to customers and communities. That value includes providing safe and reliable electricity service support to customers on innovative programs and solutions and providing economic support through dividends. So communities can invest in roads, hospitals, and recreation centers. One of the most important aspects of the campaign is that customers count on and trust the local utility to keep the lights on and help them manage their energy use. We have the trust because we work with our customers one on one in the communities where they live, work and play LDCs have a customer first mindset, which is communicated through the campaign with the tagline being on the frontlines of power,   Dan Seguin  05:34 Being in public affairs. I'm looking forward to your response for the next question. Does the campaign have more significance in any election year like 2022? And if so, why?   Teresa Sarkesian  05:47 Yes, Dan, I think the power of local hydro campaign has more significance during an election year. As distributors, we continue to have our fingers on the pulse of what Ontarians want from their electricity system. And we want to help customers better understand the evolving electricity system now that electricity is being seen as the answer to many climate change and netzero challenges. Customers will turn to their local utility to ask questions and seek advice on a wide range of electricity matters. And similarly, candidates and politicians will monitor what EDA has to say around electricity issues, as they understand that LDCs are on the frontlines with customers and know what is important to them.   Rebecca Schwartz  06:29 So, Teresa, your organization has communicated that Ontario's power system is changing and that local utilities are on the front lines. What exactly do you mean by that?   Teresa Sarkesian  06:39 customer demands and expectations are changing both in terms of interest in using new technologies, as well as service oriented expectations. Many households and businesses are embracing new ways to manage their power use while exploring electric vehicles, solar panel installation, battery storage switching from gas to electric heating, through ground source heat pumps, and other cost saving technologies that help reduce energy waste. Customers are looking for information and advice to connect to the distribution grid and possibly sell their surplus generation or storage back to the grid. The relationship with the customer is now developing into a two way street much more dynamic and integrated than in the past, when the flow of energy was one way only, and LDCs are well positioned to facilitate electrification of the economy, such as supporting the development of electric vehicle charging infrastructure, and to capitalize on the opportunities related to energy storage from electric vehicles connecting to the grid LDCs are ready and able to assist, operate and own charging infrastructure services to plug in the growing demand for private and public electrify transportation. We want to work with government and third parties to help customers explore these options safely and cost effectively while ensuring that we deliver on our responsibility to maintain the reliability of the distribution grid.   Dan Seguin  08:00 Okay, Teresa, I understand that the Electricity Distributors Association relies on input and guidance from dedicated subject matter experts who serve on the diverse councils and committees. Could you impact or provide examples of how these groups guide the development of your policies and how that impacts utilities and electricity customers?   Teresa Sarkesian  08:24 Thanks for that question, Dan. We have over if you can believe this 150 volunteers from the LDC members that serve on one or more of our eight standing councils and committees. They are an extraordinarily committed group of subject matter experts from all corners of the province, representing utilities and communities of all sizes. These EDA councils and committees come together in response to government agency and regulatory consultations and some are very, very technical. The EDA is the platform that brings the industry together and we build consensus based industry positions to present to government agencies and regulators in the province. Over the past couple of years, we have prepared 50 policy submissions annually, and we are on track to do the same in 2021. Examples are far reaching from building changes to enable a customer choice model to supporting the implementation of broadband expansion to shaping ISO market renewal design. Our elected board also provides additional policy guidance on longer term issues. Our power to connect vision papers which set out a 15 year vision to explore new business models for LDCs in enabling distributed energy resources, were some recent strategic thought leadership from our board. And we are exploring more policy work in the area of net zero impacts on the distribution sector. So stay tuned for further insights on that issue. Our volunteers are highly engaged, and I would like to thank them for their time and expertise to the industry.   Rebecca Schwartz  09:55 Can you provide us with examples where collectively with utilities you proposed and advanced policy solutions at Queen's Park, which ones are you most proud of?   Teresa Sarkesian  10:05 Well, we have so many examples, Rebecca. So it was hard for me to choose. But I'm going to pick a couple from the last couple of years because I think during the pandemic, I'm particularly proud of our advocacy when things are so chaotic, down with decision makers at Queen's Park. So one way we demonstrated our customer first mandate was related to the COVID Energy Assistance Program. At the beginning of COVID. Last year, the EDA raised concerns with government that customers were struggling with electricity costs. Because of the lockdown associated with the pandemic. The EDA in its members developed and tabled ideas to provide financial support to residential and small business customers, and to provide partial relief from the global adjustment for larger customers. From there, we work closely with the Ministry of Energy to develop and implement the guidelines for the COVID-19 energy assistance program called CEAP and later the CEAP Small Business Initiative, with government providing 17 million in funding through the first phase of the pandemic. After a subsequent advocacy push from EDA and 2021. An additional 23 million was approved for the CEAP programs. CEAP has assisted more than 62,000 Ontario households and more than 13,000 small businesses. And the CEAP program is a great example of how utilities put customers first. And we're particularly proud of that because it was such a trying time, and it feels good to know that customers were supported by the utilities. The second example is our long standing advocacy efforts on the Ontario Energy boards modernization. We were very pleased this past year to see many of the EDA's modernization recommendations incorporated into the Minister of Energy's mandate letter to the OB chair. This issue has been and continues to be a multi year priority for our sector, we are confident that there will be constructive change ahead to reduce regulatory burden for LDCs. So utilities can focus more on meeting customer needs as the energy sector transforms.   Dan Seguin  12:01 Okay. Now, in your vision paper the power to connect advancing customer driven electricity solutions for Ontario, what are you proposing as a new way forward for Ontario's electricity system?   Teresa Sarkesian  12:16 As you know the electricity sector is transforming rapidly, we are moving towards a two way electricity flow.  With more customers generating and storing energy behind the meter, LDCs have a unique opportunity to be at the forefront of grid transformation by deploying these enabling technologies and developing a service platform that provides new innovative offerings to customers and DER providers. We recognize consumers as drivers of change and local distribution utilities are really at the center of that change with them. We can leverage new technologies to deliver high quality electricity services, and help customers connecting to the grid. We envision local utilities owning operating and integrating small scale clean energy and storage systems, also known as distributed energy resources right into the local grid to better meet consumer needs while augmenting the bulk power grid. We think LDCs should have a greater role as we move forward in areas such as digitalization of utilities in the grid planning locally, regionally and for the bulk system, and to provide alternatives where possible, that are lower cost than traditional capital investments.   Rebecca Schwartz  13:27 Okay, great. So now how can utilities best serve the interests of its customers in today's evolving industry?   Teresa Sarkesian  13:34 Well, I think Rebecca, we can best serve the interests of our customers by doing what LDCs do best. That's by continuing to build connections and trust with Ontarians through our customer centric approach to service by staying close and by providing knowledge and guidance to our customers on what matters to them most. Whether that's managing bills, conservation programs, ensuring reliability, supporting EV charging connections, whatever it may be. LDCs are trusted by customers and expected to have the answers and solutions to help them engage in a customized way with the evolving energy grid.   Rebecca Schwartz  14:08 Alright, so our utilities aligned with Ontario's long term energy plan as it relates to cost effective electricity and greenhouse gas emission reduction targets?   Teresa Sarkesian  14:18 Well, that's a great question because Ontario has a relatively clean grid compared to many other jurisdictions. While there is still room to improve, we need to focus efforts on reducing greenhouse gas emissions, where we will achieve the greatest reduction. therefore reducing emissions in the transportation sector and in the building sector are expected to play a bigger role in meeting broader climate change targets given that emissions from those two sectors comprise approximately 60% of all greenhouse gas emissions in Ontario. And utilities are very keen to support the fuel switching from gas to electric vehicles as a critical part of reducing greenhouse gases in Ontario. It poses an interesting challenge that as we decarbonize our economy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, electricity use is expected to actually grow, we need to ensure that low or no emitting resources are pursued, such as renewables, energy storage and energy efficiency, along with other emerging technologies, such as hydrogen and small modular reactors. Presently, Ontario does not have a comprehensive public policy framework on these matters. We are looking forward to new direction coming out of the province on a multitude of initiatives including a new long term energy plan, and electrification strategy potentially from the Ministry of Transportation, and a new environmental plan from the Ministry of the Environment. I do want to speak to the electricity system because we would like to see a renewed emphasis on conservation and energy efficiency, with LDCs being at the forefront of these initiatives. For every kilowatt hour saved, one less kilowatt hour needs to be generated. Ontario has an unusual arrangement where conservation is centrally run, and not led by the local distribution companies, which is the more common practice in other jurisdictions across North America. LDCs are keen to provide conservation programs as part of a broader, more comprehensive package of solutions to help customers manage energy use and costs. LDCs were very successful in delivering conservation in Ontario the past few years LDCs deliver conservation at a cost of 1.5 cents a kilowatt hour, which was unparalleled in North America. It would be great to bring back that cost efficient and effective approach to the province and put LDCs back in the driver's seat on designing and delivering conservation for customers.   Dan Seguin  16:48 Same line of questioning here Teresa, can you share with our listeners the views of your association on the long term strategy for EVs and electrification in Ontario?   Teresa Sarkesian  17:02 So LDCs are at the forefront and have the expertise and relationships that will be crucial to expanding electrification. LDCs need to be central to supporting an electrification strategy in Ontario given the challenges utilities will face with increased load and capacity issues. And there is an opportunity to also harness the storage capacity of electric vehicle batteries to assist with grid reliability, particularly in emergency situations. But for LDCs to fully seize this opportunity ahead and effectively manage the challenges associated with large scale electrification, regulatory frameworks need to be better aligned with these fast emerging trends. Incorporating electrify transportation infrastructure should be viewed with the same regulatory lens as investing in poles, wires and transformers. There is a broader societal benefit. And while many LDCs are eager to build EV infrastructure, they face barriers today and getting in included in their rate base. That in turn is a crucial factor in enabling them to justify it amortize a significant upfront investment required to ensure system reliability with growing EV charging. And the same challenge applies to investments needed to support transit and fleet electrification as well. The current rate classes are not well suited to fast charging requirements and this is a disincentive to strategic infrastructure investment in the context of transit and fleet charging in particular, overnight or other rate classes designed to accommodate and equitably price fleet EV charging has already been implemented elsewhere and are needed in Ontario.   Dan Seguin  18:38 Thanks. Now, what is your organization's role in the electrification of transportation?   Teresa Sarkesian  18:45 So it's an exciting time for the sector to be part of this and electrification will play a significant part in Ontario's netzero future and LDCs need to play a key role in enabling the full potential of EVs in Ontario. So what is the EDA doing? so the EDA continues to participate in multi stakeholder discussions with a range of parties and government officials. Currently, we are participating on the transportation electrification Council, which is a working groups set up by the Ministry of Transportation. And that's going to go on for the next few more months, but recurring themes today include the need for rate basing of charging infrastructure to help stimulate expansion of public charging networks and for the longer term benefit of ratepayers and also discussion of challenges relating to household EV charging, such as the potential need for major electrical upgrades. But we have ongoing advocacy related to electrification, not only with the Ministry of Transportation, but across government and with the agencies and the regulator.   Rebecca Schwartz  19:45 Teresa, in one of your policy papers, Roadmap to a brighter Ontario, you identified current barriers to the evolution of local distribution companies for the future. Can you expand on what those are and perhaps what are some solutions?   Teresa Sarkesian  19:59 Absolutely. At least so currently we are as a sector lacking a comprehensive regulatory framework on distributed energy resources. There are some consultation and review processes in play at both the Ontario Energy Board and at the Independent Electricity System Operator, but they are both at the fairly early development stage, there needs to be the ability to have remuneration and more certainty and clarity, going forward to establish the role of LDCs in supporting and optimizing the electricity grid. So I want to talk about a few barriers that we have identified. So one of the challenges we have is that we must improve the distribution system plans through investments in grid visibility, we need to ensure that LDCs are permitted to make investments in grid visibility to benefit fully from the value of DERs. And by improving visibility, it will ensure that the distribution system plans are developed with greater certainty and prudence. Greater visibility also increases the ability of LDCs to coordinate with the ISO to further optimize broader electricity system benefits. Another area of concern we have is we need to remove restrictions on LDC ownership of DER resources. Currently, LDCs are restricted to owning DERs of 10 megawatts or less, there should be more flexibility in owning the large DERs and the LDC sector also needs more clarity on behind the meter ownership of the DERs. There is some light guidance by the OEB right now that will allow the ownership of behind the meter non wires alternatives, as they call them, if it can be demonstrated to be more cost effective than traditional capital investments, but we still need more certainty to ensure that is the case going forward. Another area of concern for our sector is we need to allow LDCs to control and operate DER assets for two primary purposes. And these are often DER assets that are owned by customers behind the meter. But we need to have ability to control and operate these for two main reasons. One is to allow for coordination and aggregation of DERs to respond to ISO led procurements pertaining to province wide system reliability. And also to coordinate and aggregate DERs to address local reliability within the distribution network. So these are just a few of I think we have about 15 solutions, but I thought I would just target three for the audience today.   Dan Seguin  22:27 This next one is very interesting - for me. How will distributed energy resources change the relationship between utilities and customers.   Teresa Sarkesian  22:38 While many utilities are interested in optimizing DERs that reside behind the meter and may be underutilized by customer owners and operators. Currently, there is over 4000 megawatts of DERs behind the meters of utilities across Ontario. Better digitalization of utility will provide visibility of where all those resources sit on the distribution grid. With that knowledge and the ability of LDCs to be permitted to offer price signals, owners and operators of these DERs could choose to sell back some of the generation or storage to assist the utility in supporting grid reliability. And in order to dispatch the DERs utilities will need to invest in advanced control systems to achieve this level of grid sophistication. This integration of customer assets on the distribution grid will potentially create more efficiencies in the system by delaying or avoiding other generation or transmission investments. It will be a much more dynamic relationship with customers than in the past.   Rebecca Schwartz  23:37 Wow, I can't believe that 2022 is already upon us. So what are the top two issues that could impact utilities, their shareholders and the more than 5 million customers across the province?   Teresa Sarkesian  23:51 Well, that's a great question, Rebecca. So one of the issues that we see that could be important for our sector and customers will be the post pandemic economic recovery and the upcoming provincial election in Ontario. So with regard to the post pandemic economic recovery, there has been a lot of discussion about the opportunities related to electrification. So depending on how fast government would like to move, or to incent electrification in Ontario, this could be really quite challenging for LDCs to be at the ready, because as I mentioned before, we need to make sure that we have the proper capital investments, remuneration and visibility tools to make sure that we can effectively electrify Ontario's economy. And with regard to the Ontario election, depending on the election results, there is always a possibility that there may be a change in focus for the energy sector. So if there might be a shift in government, perhaps they might want to go harder or faster on net zero or electrification targets. So we'll have to wait and see what happens. I guess the election is only about seven months away now.   Dan Seguin  24:58 Okay, Teresa Now for the fun part. How about we close off with some rapid fire questions? Okay, first one, what is your favorite word?   Teresa Sarkesian  25:11 Compassion   Dan Seguin  25:13 What is the one thing you can't live without   Teresa Sarkesian  25:17 my sense of humor   Dan Seguin  25:18 What is something that challenges you?   Teresa Sarkesian  25:21 Working in the ever changing electricity sector is both challenging and rewarding.   Dan Seguin  25:27 Now, if you could have one superpower, what would it be?   Teresa Sarkesian  25:32 Not needing to sleep.   Dan Seguin  25:35 Okay, if you could turn back time and talk to your 18 year old self, what would you tell her?   Teresa Sarkesian  25:43 Well, that would be going back a very long time ago at this stage, Dan. But what I would say to her is be brave and take a year to travel, because you won't have the time to do it again for a very, very long time for a whole year, perhaps not until retirement.   Dan Seguin  25:58 And lastly, what do you currently find most interesting in your sector?   Teresa Sarkesian  26:05 I think it's the energy transformation journey we are all on right now. We are part of a global transformation on electrifying society. It's not just happening in Ontario. It is happening all across the world. It is so exciting to be part of global change. And I can't say I've really ever had that before in my career.   Rebecca Schwartz  26:24 Alright, Theresa, we reached the end of another episode of The ThinkEnergy podcast. Thanks so much for joining us today. We hope you had fun.   Teresa Sarkesian  26:32 I did. Thank you so much. It was great to chat with you today.   Rebecca Schwartz  26:36 I sure hope you enjoyed this episode of The ThinkEnergy podcast. If so please head over to our iTunes SUBSCRIBE And leave us a review.   Dan Seguin  26:44 Now For show notes and bonus content visit thinkenergypodcast.ca. Also, be sure to tell your friends and colleagues about us. Thank you for listening

Unfortunately, electrical injuries are not as rare as one would hope. But the rate of electrical fatalities is actually trending down thanks to the efforts of the Electrical Safety Authority. Today's big question: How has the Electrical Safety Authority strategically evolved its approach to safety in this modern, and increasingly electric world? Special guest, Josie Erzetic, Chief Regulatory Officer & General Counsel for the Electrical Safety Authority, is here with us today to help ground us with a greater understanding of the dangers behind electricity and how we can protect ourselves, our loved ones, and our colleagues from injury. --- Do you work in a construction related industry? Call or email (ESA.communications@esasafe.com) the ESA to learn about their spring startup sessions. They are happy to send somebody out to educate your workers about the potential hazards around powerline contact.  Related Content & Links:  Linkedin profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/josie-erzetic-0bb58010/ Grounded in Ontario Podcast: www.ESAsafe.com/podcast --- Transcript:  Dan Seguin  00:50 Hey, everyone, welcome back. This is the ThinkEnergy podcast. And in today's episode, we'll be talking about safety in this increasingly, electric world. I'm dancing.   Rebecca Schwartz  01:02 And I'm Rebecca Schwartz.   Dan Seguin  01:04 Electricity is everywhere. It has become a necessary part of our lives powering the way we live, work and play. Rebecca, how much of a headache is it when the power goes out?   Rebecca Schwartz  01:19 Hmm, it's a huge headache, Dan. And let me tell you, as a social media coordinator, I know firsthand that our customers feel the pain.   Dan Seguin  01:28 Yep, I'm the same way when the power goes out, we notice but apart from those moments, it's easy to take for granted. Likewise, with it being such a critical resource that already has many safeguards in place, it's easy to forget just how dangerous it is   Rebecca Schwartz  01:45 so true. And well, most of us have likely experienced an electric shock of some kind. Hopefully, for most people, just a small Static Shock, you know, from walking across your carpet with socks on and touching the closest victim in proximity to you. But I digress. static shocks like these are of little consequence. However, when it comes to the electric current running through our homes, businesses and communities via wires and powerlines incidents involving electric shock are anything but amusing.   Dan Seguin  02:15 Unfortunately, the sobering reality is that electrical injuries are not as rare as you and I or the Electrical Safety Authority would like. According to the Ontario electrical safety report, there have been a 135 electrical related fatalities in the past 10 years. 52 of those deaths were a result of electrocution, or the effects of an electrical burn, and 83 were a result of electrical fires. The silver lining is that the rate of electrical fatalities is actually trending down. fatalities have dropped 13% Compared to the previous 10 year period.   Rebecca Schwartz  02:59 And the organization behind this downwards trend is the Electrical Safety Authority. They serve to regulate and promote electrical safety in Ontario, improve safety for the well being of all Ontarians and ultimately to reduce electrical injuries and fatalities to zero.   Dan Seguin  03:16 So Rebecca, here's today's big question. How has the electrical safety authorities strategically evolved, its approach to safety in this modern and increasingly electric world? Special guest, Josie Erzetic, Chief regulatory officer and General Counsel for the Electrical Safety Authority is here with us today to help ground us with a greater understanding of the dangers behind electricity, and how we can protect ourselves, our loved ones, and our colleagues from injury. Hey Josie, Welcome to the show. Perhaps you can start us off by telling us more about your organization, your role as a regulator, and what fuels your passion for working there?   Josie Erzetic  04:12 Thanks so much, Daniel. I'm really happy to be on the show. So Thanks for inviting me. I guess what I'd start off with is just talking about ESA's mission, and that is to promote electrical safety across Ontario. So in fact, our vision is an Ontario where people can live work and play safe from electrical harm. So we're talking about electrical safety at home, as well as in the workplace. So how do you do that? We basically have carriage four regulations in the province. So the first one being the one people probably associate most which with us, which is the Ontario Electrical Safety Code. The second one is that we license all of the LEC's and ME's, that's master electricians and licensed electrical contractors in the province. Thirdly, we regulate electrical product safety. And finally, we regulate the safety of all licensed distribution companies in the province. And that would be, for example, Ottawa Hydro. So we regulate safety in that regard as well. And we're constantly just scanning the market for new areas that we perceive present an electrical safety risk to consumers to Ontarians. And we promote education, electrical safety education. So what what fuels my passion you asked? It's basically that safety and consumer protection mandate, I find it very, very meaningful work to do this. So that's what gets me up in the mornings. And I'm really fortunate to just work with a really, really great group of people.   Rebecca Schwartz  06:01 with safety and risk mitigation top of mind how the accidents increased or decreased in the last five to 10 years. And how do you measure this?   Josie Erzetic  06:10 it's a really good question. And I'm very happy to report that over the last 10 years, overall, the state of electrical safety in Ontario has improved. There's been a 42% reduction in critical injuries that result as a result of electrical incidents, and there's been a 30% reduction in electrical fires. Overall, as well over the past decade, there's been an 11% decrease in electrical related fatalities. When it comes to power lines, specifically, there has been an 8% decrease in the last 10 years in power line related fatalities. So how do we know this? we track all the data. So we look very carefully at electrical fatalities, as well as critical injuries. And we really sort of hone in on where they're coming from. So I'll give you an example. For example, dump truck drivers a number of years ago, we recognized that there were a lot of electrical contact with power lines as the result of dump truck drivers keeping the box on their truck in an elevated position. So as a result of that we really focused in on that problem and started to do a lot of work with that industry. So what did we do? we created a whole campaign around, look up, look out. So we posted these types of signs all around construction areas, we posted power line safety posters. We delivered safety talks to industry associations to students to construction workers. And we worked in partnership with the IHSA, which is the infrastructure Health and Safety Association. And we also translated some of our safety materials into other languages, including French, Portuguese, Punjabi, to make sure that people understood the message. And as a result of it, what's happened is that the number of powerline contacts from that industry has decreased by 28%, when you compare five year periods. So having said all that, there's still a lot of work to be done. And we're again tracking data to look at where we might see other risk areas so that we can really focus in on those.   Dan Seguin  08:53 Now let's move on from data to reports. I know you recently released an annual safety report. What is that telling you?   Josie Erzetic  09:01 So our annual safety report is called the Ontario electrical safety report or OESR. It's the only document of this kind in Canada. And what it really does is help us identify emerging risk areas. So this this last month, we released our 20th edition. And what it's telling us on the homeowner side certainly is we've seen an increase in power line contacts reported from the public. So this is not what I was referring to earlier in terms of fatalities per se, but it's just an increase in the numbers of contacts, which of course could lead to serious injury or fatality, so we want to really think about data like this and try to send our safety message to the public. So where are we seeing contact? we're seeing it in areas like tree trimming or cutting. We're seeing it in things like kite flying or home improvement. work. For example, if you think about it, you're working around your home, you're moving around a ladder, let's say, to clean your eavestroughs, anything like that. And we're potentially seeing power line contact as a result, yard renovations. So we noticed that, especially during this pandemic period, where people are doing a lot of their own renovation work, there's a potential there for power line contact. So what we've done is we're shifting a lot of our campaigns online, and we're sending out messages like stop, look and live, we find that people are going online, when they're thinking about doing renovations when they're hiring contractors to help with some of those renovations. So we want to send out those messages that make sure you're aware of powerlines, you're aware of what you're doing, and that you stay far enough away. Another example is pools and pool clearances or hot tubs. So in that sense, we've sent out messages saying make sure you keep yourself and your equipment, for example, pool skimmers, which can be quite long, far away from overhead power lines, and our recommendation is at least three meters away. So that's on the homeowner side. And if we want to switch it now to the work side, on the occupational side, I point to the fall of 2019. Were in the span of about 24 hours, we were notified tragically of two critical injuries and two deaths as a result of powerline contact. And those were four separate incidents. So one was a crane construction worker. The second one was arborists that were it was a team of two arborists that were involved in tree trimming. The third one involved a TTC worker. So that's the Toronto Transit Commission in Toronto. And, and the fourth one was a drill operator. So this was a really tragic day where you had a number of incidents just occurring in very close temporal proximity. But it was also a catalyst for us to think about redesigning our power line campaign. And so what we're doing as a result is we have campaigns twice annually so that we make sure it's at the start of construction season, as well as in the fall months. We're also working closely with the Ministry of Labor to understand all of the circumstances behind those incidents. And we also work with our industry partners to make sure that we educate workers who are at high risk, and I mentioned arborist as an example. So we want to again focus in on those occupations that we think are at high risk of powerline contact. We've also observed a rise in incidents involving young workers. And as a result, we have specialists who go to the colleges to ensure that students young workers involved in things like heavy machinery operation in the arborist industry, get the information about the potential hazard around power line contact, so to ensure that they're well educated on that. And we also encourage any companies. So anyone who is listening to this podcast, who you know works in a construction related area, if you want to give us a call about our spring startup sessions, we're happy to send somebody out to educate your workers about the potential hazards around powerline contact. And you can do this by just emailing us at ESA.communications@esasafe.com. And we'd be happy to do a spring startup session for folks.   Rebecca Schwartz  14:11 Thanks, Josie. We'll make sure to include that in our show notes. So we read that the Electrical Safety Authority is striving to be a modern risk based electrical safety regulator for Ontarians. What exactly does that mean?   Josie Erzetic  14:25 Yeah, it's a great question. And I often think about that, myself, what does it mean to be to be a modern regulator, so it can mean a lot of things to a lot of people, but I'll sort of give you the key elements of it for us. So it really, it means to us to use something that we call risk based oversight. It means leveraging technology and really fostering the capabilities of our people. So when we say risk based oversight, as you can imagine, trying to be a safety regulator. The complex world we live in today in a in a province, as populous as the province of Ontario is a difficult task, you can't be everywhere all at once. So we use risk base to really prioritize and focus on the highest risk electrical installations, we actually have an algorithm that helps us understand which installations are the high risk ones, and we prioritize those and have a whole system for prioritization. So we're basically putting the most time in the highest risk areas. Along those lines were also through. And we did this through the COVID period, we're really piloting the use of what we call remote inspections. So that in other words, rather than an inspector attending at each installation, there's the possibility for a licensed electrical contractor to send in photos or videos. And we put job aids around that and given instruction to the industry about what we're looking for. So again, so low risk installation, and in the inspectors discretion, they can accept photos or videos, which you can imagine, makes it more efficient for us doing our job. And it's also, you know, potentially an efficiency value to the contractor as well to submit photos rather than having somebody attend in person. So that's another thing where we're moving forward as a modern regulator, I'd say, in terms of leveraging technology, we've really moved digital, I think, as have a lot of companies at this time. So example, where we used to have all our master exams happening in person, they can now happen virtually. So we have a system where we can do virtual proctoring of exams, so you can do your exam online, we can do online training, which is either synchronous or asynchronous, which is which is terrific for folks. If it's synchronous, then you might have an instructor with you asynchronous, you're watching videos, or you're going through PowerPoint on on your own time. So it's, it's leveraging technology for us, but also for the folks that we service. And another big thing we've done is our plan review group, which looks at electrical drawings, for complex electrical installations. So say, for example, for a car manufacturer or a large industry, rather than having these clients submit hard copies of complicated electrical plans, they can now do so digitally through our electronic plan review portal. So that's something again, that's very good for clients and good for efficiency purposes. For us, we also have a new scheduling tool that provides customers better notice of when an inspector is going to arrive, which is again, a real win from a from an efficiency standpoint, and we're now launching a project that would allow master electricians and licensed electrical contractors to submit documents online, so time saving there. And the last area I'd say is focusing on fostering new skills. So where our employees need to augment skills or develop new skills, we're very supportive of continuing education and, and skills broadening. And we're also looking at where do we have gaps? Where is technology? Or is our sector evolving, and we need to ensure we're evolving with it. So an example I give you there is what we've just been talking about, which is around data analytics. So we've recognized that we need to improve our capability in that regard. And as a result, we've hired a couple of new people to help us in that regard. And we're also augmenting skills of folks that we already have working for us. I think I'd be remiss if I didn't mention diversity and inclusion. I think a lot of employers are thinking about that right now, as are we. And so we do have what we call an idea strategy, which is inclusion, diversity, equity and accessibility. And I think that is a very important part of being a modern regulator. And I would say that, you know, I'm really happy to report that 80% of our executive team is now women. So I think we're making some real advances in that area, but you know, I'll be honest with you, I'd like to see more so We're continuing to work on that. So I guess that's in summary, what I really see is being a modern regulator.   Dan Seguin  20:08 That's very interesting. Thanks, Josie. Now, wondering if you could tell us about your organization's new corporate strategy at a high level? Can you walk us through the four strategic goals and why they're so important?   Josie Erzetic  20:23 Yeah. So it's, it's a very good question. And some of these goals we have maintained from previous years and others we've really expanded upon. So I would say the, the first of the four main goals is really safety. And that's one that's always been a focus of our organization. But having said that, we can all see the rapid evolution of technology in the sector. So we're really maintaining a close focus on that, and working with industry partners in that regard. So examples I give you there are things like the adoption of electric vehicles or energy storage technologies. So in the example I give you is that I'm currently sitting on a council that the Ministry of Transportation has set up around Evie adoption. So we want to participate on councils like that, that look at this one is on the electrification of the transportation sector. So that's an important part important pillar in the strategy, and an important part of what we're doing. So we do things like we anticipate new risk areas, we have something called the harm lifecycle, which really has a scanning the market, looking at potential for new technology, new harms that we should be monitoring and assessing. And then we decide, is this a high risk area that we would like to pilot a program in as an example? Is this something we should be partnering on? Like the example I just gave you with what MTO is doing? Is this something that we want to continue as a program, once we have achieved our goals in it? Is it something that we exit from so we have a whole lifecycle and how we look at risk. So I think that's an important part of the new strategy around safety. And then compliance, that's also something that we have carried over from our previous strategy. But I think, if anything, I would say we're almost amping up what we're doing in this area. So we work closely with our licensed communities, for example, the licensed electrical contractor community, and we educate the public in terms of ensuring that they hire a licensed electrical contractor, rather than, for example, going to unlicensed individuals. And we refer to that as the underground economy. So I would say that this new strategy really emphasizes the importance of getting at that underground economy or, you know, I'd like to put it as like, just let's take a bite out of that underground economy, let's reduce what's going on there. So we want to educate homeowners to not hire unlicensed individuals. And we will take enforcement action, where it's required against those people who are working illegally and not taking out licenses or permits because there are real safety and consumer protection risks around that type of work. And we've got some real active campaigns around that. For example, we have a Kijiji Blitz, where we are actively looking for people advertising services illegally on Kijiji and forcing those to come off Kijiji. Our third goal is operating with organizational agility. And I think, as a lot of companies are doing today, and as we talked about earlier, we're trying to leverage technology to make ourselves more efficient, and reduce, you know, burden for the licensees. So whether those are licensed electrical contractors, or LDCs, such as Hydro Ottawa, we're trying to reduce burden for our clients. And I think the last area is really around public accountability. We want to be seen as a publicly accountable transparent regulator So we do regular surveys of our customers to identify areas for improvement. You know, what are our strengths? But what are our weaknesses? And how can we do better? I think ESA has a culture of continuous improvement, which we're very proud of.   Rebecca Schwartz  25:18 Thanks for the reference to the underground economy, it seems like there's a black market for everything, even electrical services. Has there been a story that's stuck with you in regards to an electrical incident resulting in a serious injury that could have been prevented? Or is there a safety tip that you wish everybody knew?   Josie Erzetic  25:37 Yeah. So thank you for that question. And something that is real top of mind for me lately, is something called lichtenburg generators. So we've had a number of serious injuries and some deaths involving these devices. And my safety tip is stop using these devices. They are devices that they can either be made. So people were seeing people doing them as do it yourself projects, or they can be purchased. However, they're not a product that's either approved or certified by any certification body, and they're extremely dangerous. So we're aware of at least five fatalities and one critical injury that have taken place over the last three years. And a couple of those fatalities occurred earlier this year. And what these things are, I don't know if you've ever heard of them before, but they are used to create art. So they're like a wood burning type device. So you create it by burning designs into wood or acrylic. But they're a lot of them are homemade. And people take parts out of microwaves, for example, to put these things together. And they have a lot of accessible wiring components. So they're very unsafe to handle. And so and particularly on social media forums, we're seeing that individuals are posting videos, and they're instructing each other on how to build these devices. So right now we have a very comprehensive public safety awareness campaign to educate the public about the dangers of using Lichtenberg generators. And we're specifically targeting that sort of do it yourself, community and those who are interested in things like woodworking so what we're finding it's primarily men aged between 20 and 40, to not carry out this type of hobby and not use these types of devices. And if anyone is aware of advertising of this kind of advice, we would encourage them to call us at 1-877-esa-safe or visit us online. And and make us aware of this because we are asking, particularly YouTube to try to get these How To Videos removed. So the safety tip again, is don't use these devices. They're very dangerous.   Dan Seguin  28:20 Now your organization has a vision, a big vision to create an Ontario where people can live, work and play safe from electrical harm. During the pandemic, have there been any particular challenges or opportunities in achieving this?   Josie Erzetic  28:37 Yeah, it absolutely, because as I'm sure you both have found, people were at home. That means, among other things, a lot of on at home online shopping. So we want to make sure that people are very aware that electrical products that you're looking at, make sure they've been approved by a recognized certification body. So from both a safety awareness point of view, but also a consumer protection point of view, we want to make sure that people are buying approved products, as you both know. Online, it's so it's a global problem. You can buy products from anywhere in the world now and have them shipped directly to your house. So again, as a regulator, it's hard to be everywhere all at once. So the best thing is to have consumers aware themselves that when you're buying electrical products, you will want to ensure that it's either CSA certified UL certified, that you've got an approval mark on that product and you look for it when you're buying it on these online platforms. We share jurisdiction here with Health Canada, so I know Health Canada is all so concerned about this problem. So what we've done is we've set up a task force and we include ourselves on it, Health Canada, our own ministry, provincially, which is the ministry of government and Consumer Services. We've got manufacturers working with us distributors, consumer advocates, we've got bricks and mortar stores as part of the task force. But we also have online retailers. And we're all discussing the problem of consumer awareness, consumer protection and safety, because it's an all our interest to make sure people are safe. And we're putting resources into follow up on any reports we see, or we receive about unsafe consumer products. So we have been and we will follow up on 100% of reports we receive where somebody says, Look, I bought this thing it's unapproved, you know, I found that it sparked or there was a flash, when I tried to plug it in, we will follow up on all these things. We're also really enhancing consumer consumer awareness efforts, especially around this time of year, we're heading into holiday shopping season. And so we do have a holiday safety campaign. That's where we see a lot of people online, a lot of people looking at electrical products. So this campaign really focuses on consumer safety. And this year, in particular, we're encouraging folks who, you know, may be doing a lot of holiday decorating, they may be getting together to do this type of thing. So they're putting more emphasis on it this year, I don't know maybe more so than last year, when nobody came over. We're saying, you know, look closely at your your lights, right, your holiday lights that you're buying, make sure they're approved, make sure you use them correctly. Make sure if you have old ones that you're digging out of your basement, that there's no damage to cords, so just you know, be careful.   Rebecca Schwartz  32:04 Josie, you mentioned amateur DIY is like the dangerous Lichtenberg wood burning video on YouTube. Has there been other instances where the Electrical Safety Authority has seen an increase in electrical accidents? Or what about new areas of concern?   Josie Erzetic  32:20 Yeah, it's, it's a really, it's a good question. And again, particularly through this pandemic period, where people are looking for new hobbies, or, you know, they're at home, they're thinking about ways to renovate their house, maybe they cannot find a contractor or someone says to them, okay, it'll be months and months before somebody can get your house. So they just, they feel like, Oh, well, I could I want to do it myself. Right. So in that sense, we really remind homeowners consumers, that electricity is something that is dangerous, that you need to hire a professional to do it, there is the potential homeowners can do their own work. But in our view, it is better to hire a professional because there are safety risks inherent in the work. If homeowners are doing it themselves, then we certainly would remind them that they must take out the proper notifications with ESA, because that then has an inspector coming to their house to inspect the work. So at the very least, you want to ensure that happens. But we would say primarily, look, leave it to the professionals. So hire a licensed electrical contractor. And only a licensed electrical contracting business can be hired to do this. So when you're hiring people, we also remind folks to ask to see the accurate slash ESA license number. So that should be ever it should be on the estimates you get. It should be on their their trucks, their business cards, their ultimate invoice if you're not seeing that you could be hiring somebody that's in that underground economy that we talked about earlier. So be very careful about who you're hiring. And in this regard, obviously, ESA puts out a lot of its own information. But we also now are partnering with the Mike Holmes group. And you'll probably remember Mike Holmes He's done a lot of work on television. He does a lot of work also through social media. So he has a very large following. And so as a result, we're able to amplify the message by working with that group with Mike Holmes and his family to really get out that message that this is something maybe you don't want to take on on your own because of the safety risks. So certainly, both Mike his son, Mike Jr, and Sherry have posted both on YouTube as well as their other social channels about the importance when you're thinking about renovating to hire a licensed electrical contractor, and also the importance of ensuring you ensuring that you have ESA inspect the work. So you want to make sure at the end of the job, you get an ESA certificate of acceptance when the job's complete. So you know, it's done right. The other thing we've been noticing recently, and we've really made an effort to get the word out on this, so maybe I'll mention it here on this podcast as well, is the difference between a licensed electrical contractor, a master electrician, or what we call a C of Q, Certificate of Qualification holder, a certified electrician. Sometimes people think, oh, this person is an electrician, I'll just hire them directly know, who you need to hire is a licensed electrical contractor, because they are a business. And they were required by us to have $2 million in liability insurance, as well as the WSIB insurance coverage. So how this works is the licensed electrical contractor employs Master electricians who are responsible for overseeing the work of certified electricians, so you don't hire those folks directly. You hire the LEC, and it's important for consumer protection, because that way, if there's an injury, God forbid, or something happens in your home, then there is insurance that covers that. And the homeowner, him or herself is not responsible. So we're really working to increase awareness on the differences between the licensed electrical contracting businesses, which are who you hire, versus the master electricians or the certified electricians. I think that's very important.   Rebecca Schwartz  37:17 Great tips Josie and gotta love Mike Holmes, perhaps now a little bit more broadly, pandemic times or not what are some of the biggest challenges and opportunities that are facing the Electrical Safety Authority right now in general?   Josie Erzetic  37:32 I think I I go back to the underground economy and underground work that we we talked about earlier. So and I think we mentioned that it's just it's such a big problem, not just for our sector. But overall, I think, Rebecca, that you mentioned that you can, you know, almost buy anything in the underground market now. So you really, I think Statistics Canada estimates the underground economy is over $16 billion. That's with a B in Ontario alone. So it's just it's a big problem. And we as I said, I'd like to start a new slogan, like, let's take a bite out of the underground economy, like we really need to ensure with something like electricity, there are such safety and consumer protection issues, that this is not something you want to fool around with and leave to someone who's non licensed and not take out proper permits in this area. There's just too much at risk both with your personal safety and the safety of your home. There could be a fire that results from this. So what are we doing to really tackle this i and Daniel, I think you mentioned it earlier too. It's the Kijiji work so we're actually working a lot of people go online to find contractors. We are online and looking at those ads on Kijiji, and we will send notification to advertisers who we think are unlicensed businesses offering these types of services. If we don't get a voluntary response to take down that ad, Kijiji will forcibly remove it so big shout out to Kijiji for working with us and taking those ads down. And and if we still get repeat offenders, you wouldn't believe this people will come back and advertise again. We're prosecuting them. So we now have 20 charges pending before courts. So I would say that number one consumers do not hire unlicensed people. Be careful about who you're hiring online. We're out there we're working on it, but be careful as to see those licenses people who are doing this work illegally. I would say we are working hard to pull your ads off. Do not do this come into the licensed community. If you want to do this work, then get a license and do it properly. or we will also be looking to prosecute. So we this is important. The other thing we noticed with a high level of EV adoption, we undertook an EV charger Blitz. So we noticed that some EV charging systems that you put in your home in order to charge your vehicle were being done by unlicensed individuals and being done without permits. So we had our inspectors go out and inspect and alert both homeowners because sometimes homeowners don't know that was put in improperly and alert us to where we saw, charters being put in without permits are being put in by unlicensed contractors. And as a result, we've noticed this the period that we were looking at it this year, compared to last year, we've had almost a doubling of the amount of notifications that were taken out. So it makes a big difference when people know that we're out there. We're inspecting these things, and we expect them to be done properly and safety. And we also have an anonymous online reporting tool. So I would even say to your listeners, if you think there could be unlicensed activity going on somewhere, please let us know about it. So you can go online, you will, it's anonymous, but we do appreciate details. So we can do the follow up and investigate, you go to esasafe.com. And we found that this has been a very effective tool since we launched it in April 2020. To get reports, and I will tell people that we do follow up on 100% of the leads we get about unlicensed activity.   Dan Seguin  41:47 Okay, we've covered challenges and opportunities. What about the rise of digital communication? Has it changed your organization's ability to communicate safety messaging?   Josie Erzetic  41:59 Yeah, I'd say it, it really, really has. And we've shifted a lot of our educational campaigns on to social media, because as we alluded to earlier, we do find that is where people are looking, for example, to hire contractors, they're looking for ideas, say on renovation, you know, people will follow certain interior designers, they they will follow renovators on things like Instagram, or they'll follow them on Twitter. So we're leveraging platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Google, Google, YouTube, all of those, because we find that that's where people are going now. But we also find there are potential dangers lurking there as well. And so we really have to monitor and be on top of those. So I'll give you an example of something that was a tic toc challenge that that we were made aware of in early 2020. And this was a challenge where that was issued over tick tock and it was basically about plugging in a phone charger. And then using either was a penny or a nickel or something to drag across the exposed prongs. And it results in in smoke and sparks and but it can also result in fire. So it this is obviously a really dangerous activity. So we became aware of it on social media. And then we use social as well as traditional media in order to educate, you know, basically parents and kids who were doing this, that this was unsafe, and they shouldn't be doing it. And we that was a very successful campaign. And we had more than 15 million views on that. And so we're very, very grateful. And, and we actually we won some awards for what we were able to do with with social media just in terms of identifying a risk and then educating people that they shouldn't be carrying engaging in this activity. And and I guess I should say to that we're also we're leveraging some new new opportunities, like a podcast like what you guys are doing here, which I applaud you for, by the way, we're trying to do the same thing.   Rebecca Schwartz  44:21 Now Josie, our listeners have made it this far. And now they want to know some ways that they can keep their electrical safety knowledge up to date. How can they do that?   Josie Erzetic  44:30 Yeah. So one way to do it is exactly what the two of you are doing with your podcast. We have our own podcast and it's really focused on electrical safety. So it's called Grounded in Ontario, and you can find it on our website at ESAsafe.com/podcast, but you can also go to typical platforms where you'd find podcasts like Apple podcasts or Spotify and located there. So we have new episodes coming out basically monthly. And we talk about things like what we've talked about here and more. So we've had an episode on pools and hot tubs and safety issues relating to that those EV supply equipment. So electrical vehicle chargers, which we also alluded to here, we also talk about arc fault and ground fault circuit interrupters. And we have a new episode that's just coming out on the underground economy, which we've also talked about. So that's a great place to get information. Also, our website has a lot of information and talks about things like do it yourself, renovations, talks about holiday safety talks about home and work safety. So I would, you know, recommend listeners go there. And I'd also always encourage people that if there are safety concerns, or you want to report activity, please go to our website, or please call us and I can give you the number, it's 1-877-372-7233. So we'd love to hear from people.   Dan Seguin  46:12 Okay, as it relates to your podcast Grounded in Ontario, I'll make sure that we post a link in our show notes, well Josie How about you close us off with some rapid fire questions? Are you ready?   Josie Erzetic  46:26 I'm ready.   Dan Seguin  46:27 Okay. What is your favorite word?   Josie Erzetic  46:30 I have to say I, I you know, obviously top of mind for me. workwise is safety. But just one of my favorite things to think about is also chocolate.   Dan Seguin  46:40 Now, what is one thing you can't live without?   Josie Erzetic  46:45 Chocolate?   Dan Seguin  46:45 What is something that challenges you   Josie Erzetic  46:48 with Rebecca, my love of chocolate? Because then I have to make sure that I you know, keep exercising or something?   Dan Seguin  46:55 If you could have one superpower, what would it be?   Josie Erzetic  47:00 I think the superpower question is always a really is a really great one. And I always I like picking flying for this one. Because then I figure it makes the commuting easier. And it would just be would it be great to just zip to your cottage fast or you know, zip to Europe or something. Especially these times where you know, travel is so difficult.   Dan Seguin  47:22 Josie This is my favorite one here. If you could turn back time and talk to your 18 year old self. What would you tell her?   Josie Erzetic  47:29 Okay, this one, this one I am going to answer very seriously, I would say something that I say to my my kids now who are 19 and 16. And that is believe in yourself. Believe in yourself believe in what you can do. You know, trust, trust yourself. So that that I think is very important for young people to remember.   Dan Seguin  47:53 And lastly, what do you currently find most interesting in this sector?   Josie Erzetic  47:59 Um, so I would say it's it's the pace of change. I just think our sector the energy sector is just fascinating. Right now we've talked about things like electrification of transportation, and the speed of the adoption there. We think of things like energy storage, the growth of renewables, I think of distribute, you know, distributed energy resources. I think it's fascinating. We're all concerned about climate change. So we're thinking about how we can reduce our carbon footprint, what, what role does energy play in that? What What will it look like 2030 4050 years from now where we might have entire communities that are doing things like net metering, we might have, you know, renewable generation, within a smaller community, or just you'll have solar panels on your roof, you'll have an energy storage system in your basement, you'll have an Eevee charging outside. So I think that is fascinating. I think energy is so fundamental to how we live and maybe how we'll deal with fundamental global issues like the climate crisis. And so ESA is part of that. I think it's so exciting, because you need to have all of that working safely. So the role we play is fascinating. So that's what I just find hugely fascinating and challenging about our sector.   Rebecca Schwartz  49:25 Well, Josie, we reached the end of another episode of The think energy podcast. Thanks so much for joining Dan and I today. We hope you had fun.   Josie Erzetic  49:33 I had a great time with you guys. Thanks so much. Really appreciate it.   Rebecca Schwartz  49:38 I sure hope you enjoyed this episode of The ThinkEnergy podcast. If so please head over to our iTunes SUBSCRIBE And leave us a review.   Dan Seguin  49:46 Now For show notes and bonus content visit hydroottawa.com/thinkenergy. Also, be sure to tell your friends and colleagues about us. Thank you for listening

New considerations for innovating how electricity is generated, distributed, and stored are being made every day. This includes the development and implementation of distributed energy resources - a promising solution for increasing the integration of clean energy. How will distributed energy resources help us reach our climate change targets, and what changes will be needed in order for the grid to support them? Vice President of the Alectra Green Energy & Technology Centre, Neetika Sathe, is here with us today to give us the scoop. Related Content & Links:  Linkedin profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/neetika-sathe-08ab644/ --- Transcript: Dan Seguin  00:51 Hey, everyone, welcome back. This is the ThinkEnergy podcast and today we'll explore and unpack distributed energy. I'm Dan Seguin.   Rebecca Schwartz  01:00 And I'm Rebecca Schwartz. You know, Dan, I've been thinking a lot about climate change.   Dan Seguin  01:04 Oh, boy, here comes another millennial rant.   Rebecca Schwartz  01:07 No, no, no, don't worry, I'm actually feeling grateful. Because when it comes to innovating, how we live and operate in order to stop and reverse climate change. Of course, Canada's goal is pretty ambitious and admirable. Canada's plans to be a netzero nation by 2050. I think it's pretty cool.   Dan Seguin  01:23 Absolutely very cool. And the City of Ottawa has also announced plans to be a zero emission city by 2050.   Rebecca Schwartz  01:31 To be honest, it feels like that's a lifetime away, since it's quite literally as many years away as I've been alive. But it's incredible news and evidence that our governments are committed to a decarbonized future.   Dan Seguin  01:42 and utilities! They're also gearing up at the front lines to align with these goals, especially in the electricity sector. New considerations for innovating how electricity is generated, distributed, and store are being made every day. This includes the development and implementation of distributed energy resources, a promising solution for increasing the integration of clean energy. Unlike the typical electricity journey, where it's supplied to customers from a centralized source, distributed energy resources are a means for customers to store their own generated electricity, which they can then choose to redirect the access back into the grid. Because this concept is quite different from how the grid was originally designed, a great deal of innovation and testing is required to ensure its continued reliability and safety.   Rebecca Schwartz  02:42 The people behind the Alectra green energy and technology center strongly believe in building a clean energy future and embracing new technologies. Now putting this belief into action, they have been leading the way for the development of emerging clean and customer friendly energy solutions, like distributed energy resources across their 1800 square kilometer service territory that serves approximately 1 million homes and businesses within 17 communities like Mississauga, St. Catharines and Hamilton.   Dan Seguin  03:11 So, Rebecca, here's today's big question: How will distributed energy resources help us reach our climate change targets, and what changes will be needed in order for the grid to support them? Vice President of Alectra green energy and technology center, the Neetika Sathe is here with us today to give us the scoop. Hey Neetika, welcome to the think energy podcast. Perhaps you can start us off by telling us a bit more about your role with electric Green Energy Technology Center.   Neetika Sathe  03:50 Hey, first of all, thank you so much for inviting me I can't tell you how excited I am to be here and for the opportunity to share my perspective and and the journey within the GRE&T Center. So for those of you who don't know, electric is the second largest municipally owned utility in all of North America, we serve over a million customers in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area. within Alectra we launched the green energy and technology center in 2019 with a mandate to identify, evaluate and develop and accelerate emerging clean and customer friendly energy solutions. So think of us as the ground floor for innovation within Alectra, where clean energy ideas come to life.   Rebecca Schwartz  04:39 Thanks, Neetika. Now can you tell our listeners a bit about distributed energy resources, such as how they work and also provide a couple examples?   Neetika Sathe  04:48 Sure. So distributed energy resources, which we fondly call DERs are usually referred to smaller, clean generation units that are usually located within the customer's premises, the customer could be residential, or commercial or institutional. But typically those distributed energy resources are on the customer side on the other side of the meter, and interconnected with the grid. So to give you some examples, could be rooftop solar panels, wind generating units, wind turbines, battery storage, could be your lithium ion battery storage, smart heat pumps and even electric vehicles, basically, essentially any device that can be integrated and connected to the local distribution, system or grid that is within the proximity of the customer, and possibly owned, possibly operated by the customer.   Dan Seguin  05:58 Could you tell our listeners what makes distributed energy resources an attractive option? As we strive towards our net zero goals? Are they enough to help us get there.   Neetika Sathe  06:10 So netzero goals are rather lofty and extremely aspirational. So now the whole world is looking around trying to find those low hanging fruits that can get us to our netzero goals. The beauty of DERs is that they are largely clean, dispatchable, scalable, easy to integrate into the grid provided, we work on it upfront, if we catch the DERs. As an aftereffect, it's going to cause a lot of issues for the grid. So we have a generational opportunity to ensure that the ER is integrated properly into the grid. Because these are clean and sustainable, they hold a great promise in helping us reduce GHG emissions. And that would contribute towards net zero goals. So rather than talk at high level, let's take an example, solar panels on the roof to help meet the needs of a home, the same home could have a battery storage unit and electric vehicles. And going further, when when both is distributed energy resources are used to feed the local grid. So when there is a time of high GHG Emission emissions from the grid, we could switch over to these local DERs, we could ask the customers for their support to switch over to these clean local DERs and not need to switch on or power on the natural gas or any other fossil fuel large generation. And as a result, by the use of these DERs, we could eliminate GHG emissions from the energy systems.   Rebecca Schwartz  07:57 So what does having distributed energy resources look like from the customer's perspective? Do they necessitate any lifestyle changes? And what are some of the benefits.   Neetika Sathe  08:08 So traditionally, our customers have had a passive engagement. Typically, as customers, even when we go home, we flip the switch and we don't think about it what all is happening in the background to get those electrons into our home, to give us light or to power the TV or any other appliances. But as we are moving more towards a decentralized grid, as the technology options are coming up, as energy solutions are coming up with the DERs, the customer expectations are also changing. So they're literally being able to put the customer in the driver's seat, no pun intended as they drive electric. So they can now make the choice of when they want to use their own distributed energy resources. And when they want to purchase from the grid. So think of it as the customer becoming from a passive customer to a prosumer. Whereby they can be a producer of energy or a consumer of energy. And the choice is theirs. They make the call. So it's and the DERs of the customers could have they could have smart appliances, electric vehicle storage, solar roof or ground roof solar and and really being able to integrate all of this now does it mean any lifestyle change for the customer? I guess the trick is that all of this needs to be technology enabled. So think of it as a very high tech, yet high touch. In other words, the technology needs to do what the customers want. So the customer needs to continue having the lifestyle that they choose their choice. But the difference now is there is technology set in forget technology that enables them to have more choice than just the traditional electricity grid. So this is in stark contrast of the past, our electricity generation over centuries has been better customer has strictly been a passive receiver of energy,   Dan Seguin  10:25 Alectra's green energy and technology center has a number of pilot projects, such as this is a mouthful, folks, the York Region Non-wires, alternative demonstration project, and the powerhouse hybrid project. Can you tell us about the main intent behind these projects, and what your findings have been so far?   Neetika Sathe  10:49 So at the GRE&T Center, we always want to innovate with intention. And the intention behind the pilots is always look for Win Win Win solution, we're never satisfied with one win, it needs to be the first win has got to be for the customer. It's got to work for the customer, customer friendly, meaningful, purposeful, relevant, otherwise, it's not going to stick it'll just be a science experiment. The second win has to be for the grid, especially when you're talking with respect to DERs, the proliferation of the DERs, there needs to be a thoughtful and planned integration into the grid. And only then can you get a huge benefit out of the DERs for the customer and the grid. The third win is for all of society, and we're at times where climate change is no longer an 'if', and we're all looking for solutions that that we can that can make a difference within our generation, otherwise, the future generations won't have a planet to depend on. So our intention with all of the GRE&T center pilots, whether it's the IESO non buyers, alternative pilot, or the powerhouse of powerhouse hybrid grid exchange be working on multiple platforms and and solutions. It's got to be it's got to be a win across board.   Rebecca Schwartz  12:31 Okay. Now, can you tell us how projects like these are influencing and innovating the grid?   Neetika Sathe  12:37 The conversation is focused on the need for reform, transformation and regulatory change. But until you don't roll up your sleeves and actually work on it, you got to be able to get into the trenches. It's really difficult to forecast what all roadblocks and hot points you're going to gather along the way. So the whole idea is that when we're talking about the need for policy change, the need for regulatory change that we bring real time experience from our pilots into our discussion so that those discussions can be grounded in reality, otherwise, there is a lot of vaporware in the industry right now.   Dan Seguin  13:21 What are some of the biggest modernizations you foresee being made to the grid by 2050? How is digitisation influencing these processes?   Neetika Sathe  13:33 So the grid is going to get much smarter, wiser, more intelligent, and more connected. If anything, or industry is a little bit late to the party, and we've and we have the good fortune, or the luxury of learning from other industries where this disruption has already happened. Be in the taxi industry, the banking industry, retail industry, hotel industry, they're all being transformed by digitalization. And they're all banking on one basic fundamental shift in demographics - the openness for sharing economy. So whether it's an Airbnb or you look at Uber, you have democratization of their solutions, whereby a common citizen is willing to share their assets, or their comfort or their lifestyle, as long as they're getting rewarded and incentivized in a way that works for them. So in other words, you've got a car that's sitting around, you're only driving around 4% utilization of that asset, but then you've got a little extra time. You don't mind becoming an Uber driver. And you're you're gregarious, you like hanging around people. So it works for you and you make some money. Think of those kinds of concepts now coming into our energy world, whereby that's where, that's how the birth of the concept of transactive energy takes place, whereby I talked earlier about the customer becoming a prosumer. But now those prosumers with their own distributed energy resources, should be able to play in an energy market and give some and get some. So you may be able to give some of your comfort or your or your battery storage, because the grid needs it, but then the LDC may reward you back with some dollars or some loyalty points. In fact, we are teasing this very concept out with our grid exchange transactive energy platform,   Rebecca Schwartz  15:53 Supposing everyone suddenly started putting their hands up to have distributed energy resources, would it even be possible? What are the challenges that we'll need to overcome to start seeing their mainstream adoption all across Canada?   Neetika Sathe  16:07 So the answer to this question is very similar to a Facebook status update, it's complicated. The devil truly is in the details at the distribution feeder, or transformer level, or even at a green transformer at a street level, it is impossible to generalize across Ontario or across Canada. So it really depends on the state of the grid infrastructure. If the grid infrastructure has room, it's easy to add the DERs. But if the infrastructure is already at its limit, be a thermal limit, voltage, capacity, then you're going to run out of you're going to need to think out of the box solution. So I'll give you an example. On your street, if you've got, let's say 12 homes, if one of those neighbors buys electric and starts driving electric starts charging the car, when they come home at five o'clock, no big deal, your green transformer on your street will be able to take that additional 10-12 Whatever that kilo kilowatt load turns out to be. Now, but out of 12 of those homes, let's say five electric vehicles come along. Now that green transformer at five o'clock is going to go toast, it will burn down because we would have taken it beyond its capacity limits. So how do you ensure that you can add these DERs on the existing grid keep in mind the existing grid was never designed for this kind of additional load, right. But there is a need whether it is because of democratization or decentralization, people want those energy choices, then as the utilities, it's our job to ensure that we are able to onboard these distributed energy resources. And the way to do it is start thinking outside the box. For example, perhaps we stagger, we work closely with the customer, we engage the customer, we take their permission, so the customer needs to remain in the driver's seat, we take their permission, maybe some customers say I really don't care if I start charging at five o'clock, or you want to start charging me at nine o'clock, as long as my car is fully charged for my trip tomorrow morning to work. Yet some other customer may say my wife's expecting and I may need to rush to the hospital, so I want to override and I want my car charged right now no matter what the consequences are. So the beauty with DERs is the fragmented. Think of them, like these hundreds of 1000s of minions out there that you could literally you could you know, like you could run a virtual power plant, if you were only able to talk to all of them, If only you were able to monitor control and engage with the customer one on one with these. And that's where the power comes from. It's really the power of shared economy and put intelligence on top of it to be able to really engage on a two way conversation with the customer and harness the value from these DERs. So hence the need from a smart grid so that these DERs don't exert demand all at the same time. So you can stagger them, you can queue them up, you can toggle them, you can throttle them. There are so many different options. intelligent ways to work around the problem rather than just go to the basic let's just upgrade all the infrastructure which will be tremendously expensive.   Rebecca Schwartz  20:10 Do you perceive maintenance becoming an issue as the system becomes more decentralized?   Neetika Sathe  20:16 So there are there are pros and cons to decentralization. Definitely grid modernization will require some infrastructure cost and some maintenance cost - it's going to be a new regime, different from your traditional way of running the grid. And keep in mind right now our systems rest at night. And the peak usually happens within Ontario. It happens during summer, during sunny days, because our peak is mainly coming from air conditioning loads. However, if we go into deep decarbonisation, and we want to run in heating on electricity, we are quickly going to turn from a summer day peaking province to a winter night peaking province. So that's going to look very different. And I don't have the answer, what the repercussion will be on on the system maintenance, but it is going to be a very different kind of a grid to operate.   Dan Seguin  21:22 I'm wondering if you could expand on some of the features that make the home or business a better candidate for distributed energy resources? What are some of the determining factors.   Neetika Sathe  21:34 So it all depends on the needs of the individual home or business. So in some cases, it's very simple. If you want to put solar panels on your roof, you probably if you have a 15 year old roof, or 20 year old roof, you probably want to change your roof before you put the panels up. And if you've got a large tree that is shading your roof and you don't want to cut that trim that tree down your roof is probably not the optimum optimal place to put that solar. So it's some of it is very intuitive. When it comes to electric vehicles, for example, it really depends on how you what your driving patterns are. 60% of Canadian drivers are driving less than 60 kilometers a day. But law of averages does not work when you're looking at a specific person's needs. So if you are traveling across cities every day, you've got you're putting a lot of clicks on your car, and you only have one car within the family. Probably the current EVs are not a good fit for you. But having said that, models are coming up where the batteries battery sizes are increasing. And the infrastructure for charging on the road on route is also increasing. But if you are a household of two cars, and you you're you drive 50-60 to 100-150 kilometers a day, you actually are a fantastic candidate to drive electric and enjoy the benefits of a cleaner drive and a much more fun to drive experience. So it really depends on the specific DER and how it matches up with your lifestyle.   Rebecca Schwartz  23:22 Alright, so how might someone who was interested in adopting distributed energy resources for their homes or business get the ball rolling?   Neetika Sathe  23:30 Do your research. Learn whichever best way you learn for me I love hanging around people I learned best by talking to people. If you if you're looking for EVs talk to someone who's driving an EV if you learn better by you know going for test drives and going for demonstrations like go to, for example plug and drive has an experiential center in Toronto or go to any of the dealers and ask for a test drive. There are so many websites including Aletra we have a website where we put a ton of resources on EVs. Alectra.com/e-mobility, so there's a lot of information out there. You do you Whatever floats your boat, but do your research and start whetting your appetite to figure out how what kind of DERS will fit your lifestyle.   Dan Seguin  24:25 Hey Nitika we're just about done. How about we close off with some rapid fire questions? What is your favorite word?   Neetika Sathe  24:35 It's got to be collaborate.   Dan Seguin  24:38 What is the one thing you can't live without   Neetika Sathe  24:42 Probably oxygen.   Dan Seguin  24:43 What is something that challenges you?   Neetika Sathe  24:47 purposeful innovation - how to innovate with intention   Dan Seguin  24:51 If you could have one superpower, what would it be?   Neetika Sathe  24:54 The ability to travel across time.   Dan Seguin  24:57 If you could turn back time and talk to your 18 year old What would you tell her?   Neetika Sathe  25:01 I would say don't over analyze. It's, it's not the destination that's important. The journey is important, not the destination. And the most important thing is the people that you meet and go along at on the journey.   Dan Seguin  25:19 And lastly, what do you currently find most interesting in your sector,   Neetika Sathe  25:24 I came into the utility sector because I sniffed a generational opportunity. I was, I was at Nissan, launching the Nissan LEAF, the first all electric 100% electric car from Nissan. And that's when my eyes opened up to this huge possibility of, of the automotive sector making a difference actual make actually making a difference in, in our sustainability. And really, it's the it's the power of discovering the possibilities. I know it's, it's a cliched line, this is Alectra's slugline, but I so totally believe in it, collaborating and discovering the possibilities, we actually have a generational opportunity to make a difference. And for once our electricity sector, for the most part in Canada, at least definitely in Ontario. And as you mentioned in Quebec, we are the part of the solution. We are not the problem, we bring the solution. So that's what really really excites me about our sector.   Rebecca Schwartz  26:33 Well latika, we've reached the end of another episode of The think energy podcast. Thank you so much for joining us today. We hope you had fun. I sure hope you enjoyed this episode of The ThinkEnergy podcast. If so please head over to our iTunes SUBSCRIBE And leave us a review.   Dan Seguin  26:51 Now For show notes and bonus content visit ThinkEnergy.com. Also, be sure to tell your friends and colleagues about us.   Rebecca Schwartz  26:59 Thank you for listening

The Government of Canada has mandated that 100 per cent of car and passenger truck sales be zero-emission by 2035. All kinds of measures will be required to support this transportation evolution. Are Canadians ready to embrace this relatively quick transition over to EVs? What are all the barriers? And, do Canadian businesses and municipalities have a role to play in the EV evolution? Cara Clairman, President and CEO at Plug'nDrive (and a prominent leader in the EV space) joins us to share her unique perspective. Related Content & Links:  Find your EV match (total cost of ownership tool): https://ev.plugndrive.ca/ Book a test drive with Plug'n Drive: https://www.plugndrive.ca/electric-vehicle-discovery-centre/ Used EV rebate program: https://www.plugndrive.ca/used-electric-vehicles/ ZEVIP (NRCan funding program for infrastructure): https://www.nrcan.gc.ca/energy-efficiency/transportation-alternative-fuels/zero-emission-vehicle-infrastructure-program/21876 Federal EV incentive program: https://tc.canada.ca/en/road-transportation/innovative-technologies/zero-emission-vehicles Cara Clairman - Linkedin profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cara-clairman-84967318/ --- Transcript: Dan Seguin  00:02 Hey, everyone, I'm Dan Seguin.   Rebecca Schwartz  00:04 And I'm Rebecca Schwartz, both from Hydro Ottawa.   Dan Seguin  00:07 Hey, everyone, welcome back. This is the think energy podcast. And on today's episode, we'll tackle EV-olution of transportation. I'm Dan Seguin.   Rebecca Schwartz  01:02 And I'm Rebecca Schwartz. Hey, Dan, you have an electric vehicle, right?   Dan Seguin  01:06 I sure do.   Rebecca Schwartz  01:07 I'm curious. What's your experience been? Like? Would you recommend an EV for your one and only favorite co host?   Dan Seguin  01:13 Huh? Haha. I would 100% recommend one. I love my little EV. I've actually owned two. And now my wife has just ordered her very own. I have no regrets.   Rebecca Schwartz  01:28 That's good to know. Now, if I could just get a solid pay raise, I'll be able to afford one. Hint hint nudge nudge.   Dan Seguin  01:35 Hmm. I have some great news about that, Rebecca. First. Both the feds and some provinces have great incentive programs. With these rebates, EVs are really much more affordable. In fact, as part of Canada's goal to help fight climate change, there are plans to make owning these zero emission vehicle more accessible than ever before, through addressing affordability and adequate infrastructure. Today's guest will have lots more to say about that.   Rebecca Schwartz  02:09 Whoo visions of having my very own EV are getting a little bit more clear. You have my attention go on.   Dan Seguin  02:15 In fact, the pressures on the Government of Canada has mandated 100% of car and passenger truck sales be zero emission by 2035. All kinds of measures will be required to support this transportation evolution. Everything from incentives for zero emission vehicles, to investments in infrastructure to partnerships with auto manufacturers are being pursued.   Rebecca Schwartz  02:40 Wow, that seems so soon. But that's exciting. There are so many more things I'd like to know and ask. So here's today's big questions. Are Canadians ready to embrace this relatively quick transition over to EV's? What are the barriers and do Canadian businesses and municipalities have a role to play in the EV evolution?   Dan Seguin  03:00 Joining us today we have Cara Clairman, CEO and President at Plug'n Drive, and a prominent leader in the EV space. She's here today to provide us with all of the answers. Cara, welcome to the show. Maybe you could start by telling us a bit about your organization and its mandate.   Cara Clairman  03:26 thanks so much, Dan, for for inviting me to do this. Plugn' Drive is a not for profit. So we're out there trying to educate consumers on the environmental and economic benefits of switching to an electric car. And so most of our work revolves revolves around that outreach and education to help people make the switch.   Rebecca Schwartz  03:46 The Government of Canada has set what some might call an aggressive mandate for 100% of new light duty vehicle sales to be zero emissions by 2035. Why has Canada set this mandate? And how does it play into the larger picture of net zero by 2050.   Cara Clairman  04:01 So I'm sure a lot of your listeners will know that. Transportation is actually one of the largest emitting sectors not just here in Canada, but pretty much everywhere around the world. And in fact, in many provinces of Canada, transportation is the number one largest emitter larger than industry larger than buildings. And so we really can't achieve our climate goals if we don't tackle transportation. So of course, tackling transportation is a few a few different things, not just EV but EV is a ready technology that's here that would really really help in terms of reducing emissions from consumer vehicles, as well as now some medium and even heavy duty. And this opportunity is huge because if you just take Ontario for example. You know, our number one emission source is transportation and our electricity grid is already extremely clean. We're about 95% emission reduction if we switch to EVs, because our electricity grid here is already about 90 plus percent free of greenhouse gas emissions. And that's true in many provinces of Canada. So if you look at our electricity grid across the country, you have, you know, a number of provinces that are hydro only. So it's, you know, BC, Quebec, Manitoba. And so if you look across the country, we're already about 80% GHG free pretty much. And so it's just such a perfect match with the with improving the emissions from transportation. Across Canada, we have an extremely clean energy grid. And if you think about our electricity here in Ontario, it's mostly nuclear and hydro, a little bit of solar and wind, a very small amount of natural gas. So we're already about only 5%, five to 8% fossil fuel on the grid. So plugging into our cars into that grid offers a huge emission reduction at about 90 to 95%. So as a long way of saying, you know, requiring new EV sales is a relatively easy way for the government to start making the transition for the transportation personal vehicle fleet, and would allow Canada actually to achieve the net zero by 2050, which it really can't do if it doesn't tackle transportation.   Dan Seguin  06:34 Now, Cara, are you able to expand on how Canada's zero emission vehicle mandates compare globally? Are we on par with other countries?   Cara Clairman  06:44 Well, I'll answer that question sort of in two parts. How we are now compared to the globe and other countries and how we will be right now I'd say we're a bit behind. Because we don't have an aggressive enough, set of EV policies, and we have quite a patchwork across the country in terms of provincial policies. And so our adoption rates are actually on the low side relative to a lot of other countries, I'd say we stand around 10th right now, you know, in comparison to other countries that have, you know, better policies than we have. However, the policy of zero emission new sales, right, that's just new sales, we'll still have gas cars around for quite a while. zero emission, new sales by 2035 is, is quite progressive. And I would say it's not the most aggressive policy, there are a few countries ahead of us, like Norway has, you know, a mandate for 2025. And there are a number of European countries that have set 2030. But 2035 is definitely in the pack, I would say in terms of leadership in the top, you know, 10 or 15 countries. What we really need to do though, is make this a law, you know, right now, we just have a sort of a vague commitment to it. And until it's legislated, it really doesn't have a lot of meaning.   Rebecca Schwartz  08:16 What are some of the main barriers to zero emission vehicle adoption?   Cara Clairman  08:20 Okay, well, there's lots of barriers still remaining, although we're making lots of good progress. We did a survey about four years ago. And I think the results probably would hold true today as well, asking people about about what was preventing them from choosing an electric vehicle. And actually, the number one barrier was price, which surprised us we expected people to say range or lack of public infrastructure or something like that. But three to one, they actually said, they thought EV's were too expensive. And so we know that the upfront sticker price is is a problem for people, it is still a bit more expensive than the equivalent gas car. What people don't really know is that the total cost of ownership of an EV even at today's prices is less. But it's always a challenge to help people understand you're going to pay more now and save later. And we have to help people see the advantage of doing that. So I would say you know cost and then also education because you have to help people understand that total cost of ownership over time. And actually, to help consumers on that specific point we've, we've put a really great new tool on our website called find your EV match, which really helps you see the total cost of ownership for for electric vehicles income and you can even compare an Eevee to your existing gas car that you currently drive and see your monthly savings. And so this is a really, really important point. I would also say of course, you know, we do need more infrastructure. And there still is some range hesitancy concern. But I really believe that the range issue is going away as an issue as the battery technology improves. And of course, as public infrastructure improves,   Dan Seguin  10:14 okay, Cara - How is your organization working to build consumer awareness and education to help remove consumer concerns around EVs?   Cara Clairman  10:24 Well, I mean, Dan, this is what we're doing every single day. You know, we've built our whole program around helping the consumer get over their concerns. And so we're quite accustomed to every single concern and question people have. And basically we do it in a couple of ways. We have our EV Discovery Center in Toronto, which is, you know, a bricks and mortar facility, people can come learn all about EVs, no pressure to buy anything, and test drive the latest make some models. And we have found through our research that the test drive is key to helping people get over their concerns. And that's been a bit of a challenge during COVID, although we are back to doing test drive. And then secondly, we have our mobile EV Discovery Center or our MEET, which we take two smaller cities and towns all over to sort of bring the EV Discovery Center concept to them. And so that's a great opportunity for people to learn again, and a no pressure environment is fun. And then we have our roadshow, which you know, where we go out to even further afield a locations for a day or two days to give people the chance where they may not have any, for example, and EV dealers in their community. So we're really trying to reach everyone. And so that so those are the main things that we do. And I would just add the the other program that we have that we find is really helping consumers is our used EV program, which has a rebate attached to it. And we're doing this online through webinars. But it's to help people understand who who had that idea. Oh, you know, I love TV, but I think it's just too expensive for me, to help them understand that use TVs are a great opportunity affordable and available. And in the webinar we run through a you know sort of everything you need to know to choose the use EV that's right for you. And then plug and drive is offering $1,000 rebate to anyone who lives in Ontario if you buy a used EV   Dan Seguin  12:27 Eondering if you can tell us about plugging drives electric vehicle Discovery Center, and what goes on there?   Cara Clairman  12:33 So the Discovery Center is as I said, at bricks and mortar facilities, sort of imagined Science Center meets car showroom, you want to see some photos of it, you can just check it out on plugndrive.ca. And the great thing there is it's you know, interactive fun, like I said, like a science center, people come just for fun to learn. And of course, we aren't selling cars. So people don't have that pressure that they feel they sometimes have when they go to a dealership. And then we have all the makes and models sitting right there for people to test drive. And that test drive is so key to helping someone get over their concerns. Because a lot of the times people have a preconceived notion about what an EV might be like. And they don't realize like how fun it is to drive and that these are really fantastic vehicles with great pickup. And it kind of just reminds people of the quality and the fun. And then we can run through with them how much money they're going to save then the emission reductions. And our stats tell the story. About 35% of the people after visiting the center, within six months have bought an electric car.   Rebecca Schwartz  13:41 How can Canadian businesses support the transition to electric vehicles? And how can they acquire access to the proper funding?   Cara Clairman  13:48 Yeah, we've started doing a lot of work with businesses. And what we find is, you know, number one, what they can do is look at workplace charging, we know that the home is the number one place people want to charge about 80% of us plug in our cars at home at night, take advantage of low time of use prices. It's where it's convenient, all those reasons. But the second place people want to charge is that work. And actually studies out of California have shown that if someone sees a charger at work, and then talks to a colleague who has an EV at work, they're six times more likely to adopt an electric car. So one of the great things that business can do is put in some workplace charging and then also do some education around using that charging and help their employees get on board. And some businesses are even offering an incentive to their employees to consider an EV especially companies that are looking at their own GHG reduction targets and transportation might be one of the main emitters of their organizations. So they can use those charges for their own fleet. They can electrify their own fleet that way, and they can help their employees. So those are a couple of ways businesses can help support the transition. And then you've asked about access to funding there, there is some funding through NRCan the program is called ZEVIP where businesses can apply to get some funding for workplace tight charging systems,   Dan Seguin  15:25 it would seem that municipalities across Canada have a large part to play to support the government's mandate and to make charging stations more accessible. In your experience. Has this been the case? What's your view on the role municipalities play in the electrification of transit?   Cara Clairman  15:43 Yeah, municipalities do have an important role to play and I think they are starting to recognize it more and more. So for example, one role that municipalities are playing and it's proving really important is in terms of standards for multi unit buildings. So for example, a municipality can require a certain green standard for condos or multi unit buildings being built in their territory and that will ensure that the you know Ruffin is there for the plugs in future and that new buildings will get built with you know, with the ability or sort of EV ready to help their citizens because let's face it, especially in the Greater Toronto Area, a lot of people live in multi unit and we need to make it possible for these people to plug in. There's other roles they can play for example, we're seeing a lot of municipalities set up you know their own EV policies for their you know, for public parking, for example, street parking for, for different, making certain municipal lots available for charging, there's there's lots of ways that municipalities can help. And there are, you know, through the associations, there's sharing, I know of EV policies across municipalities, they don't have to reinvent the wheel.   Rebecca Schwartz  17:06 All right, Cara, can you talk to us about Canada's electric highway? Can we actually drive our east coast to coast?   Cara Clairman  17:14 Yes, you can. It's still not that easy, I have to say. But the thing I always want to remind is that this is not a trip that many people are doing. You know, maybe some of us have done it once in our life or, you know, it's the thing that happens very rarely. So it's not as critical. It's more of again, it's it's a nice to do, it's sort of a psychological thing. People think, Oh, it's great if you can, it's still a challenge, but doable and getting easier. You know, it's something that I would say, you know, it's not a trip I'm ever going to do. And I mean, I drive my car just more locally. So I wouldn't want people to hesitate getting an EV because this isn't the easiest trip to bake.   Dan Seguin  18:02 It seems that national sales of V's are closing in on 4%. What are your recommendations to accelerate the deployment of electric vehicles in Canada?   Cara Clairman  18:12 Well, there's just a whole bunch of things we need to do. So for example, right now in British Columbia, we're hovering around 10% of new sales, Quebec close to 8%. Ontario, we're down at 2%. And so you can see that the variability in the different policies are leading to very different results. And so there's a couple of things we need to make some consistency across Canada, because what happens when you have certain provinces with really aggressive policies and certain policies, provinces without it, the vehicle supply goes to those provinces with the more aggressive policies, and then it's really hard for people, for example, in Ontario, to get vehicles, and so that ZEV mandate or ZED standard that the federal government is talking about is really important for making, you know, some more consistency across the whole country. So I'm very supportive of that. I'd also like to see some consistent building codes across the country. It seems ridiculous that in 2021, where we still have condos and apartment buildings being built with no potential for EV charging in the future, and it's so much more expensive to do a retrofit than to do it when you're building a building. So the building codes need to be updated to make sure that the buildings are required to at least rough in for EV charging in the future. So that's another really, really important one. And then, you know, we, you know, I'd like to say that the time of needing incentives is over, it isn't over. We still do need incentives for the next couple of years. I think we're going to hit price parity in a few years time and then we won't need them anymore. But for now, I think we do it Because the environmental benefit is so large, I think it makes sense that governments continue to support it.   Dan Seguin  20:06 What about charging stations is charging infrastructure rolling out at the pace to support the transition to 100% zero emission vehicle sales by 2035?   Cara Clairman  20:18 Well, we do still have more work to do in the area of public charging. But again, I'm one of those people who doesn't think this is as critical to the rollout as some other things. You know, as an EV, driver, and Dan, you said, you're also an EV driver, we're charging at home, most of us are charging at home. And we are very occasionally using public charging. I only use public charging a few times a year. And I think I'm pretty typical on a road trip or work trip. And so you do need more infrastructure. We can't have single chargers out there. You know, we need to multiply those we need them to be in strategic locations. We need them to be in places where you can grab a bite to eat and use facilities and all that. So there's work to do, but I'm not of the view that this is a primary barrier to EV adoption. Really, the infrastructure you need is at home and it's ready right now.   Rebecca Schwartz  21:18 Cara, can you tell us a bit about the sentiment among automotive manufacturers? Are they embracing the transition to a EV's at all?   Cara Clairman  21:25 Well, we're certainly I mean, you really can't turn on your news or open your your apps, which is how most of us probably get our news these days without seeing a new announcement. So we certainly are seeing the commitment to EVs. In the future, where there's a bit of a struggle, I would say as sort of right now. Right now in Canada supply extremely low, it's quite difficult to get vehicles, all the manufacturers are ramping up. But that doesn't happen overnight. And so, you know, we need to do a bit more to get the vehicles in here right now. The exciting thing is, you know, here in Ontario, we're going to be making EV's in the next couple of years. And so the supply challenge will get fixed. And and then we're going to see, I think, you know, just massive changes, but for now the next year to two years, we definitely have a struggle to to bring in the vehicles. And we have to show to the automakers that Canada is a good place for EV adoption, because of course they send the vehicles where they think the best opportunity is to sell them.   Dan Seguin  22:29 Cara - Just wondering what should consumers know about zero emissions vehicles today? How has technology evolved over the past few years? And are there funding opportunities for consumers looking to purchase one?   Cara Clairman  22:43 Well, of course, I want people to know that. EVs are a fantastic option right now what I hear from a lot of consumers, which which is helpful is you know, yes, EVs are the future, I'm sure that we're all going to be driving EVs, but what I think a lot of people don't realize is that they're totally ready for primetime right now. Fantastic quality, good range, everything you really need is already there. And of course, the fun and the super great pickup and all those things too. And so I think, you know, people shouldn't hesitate, that that when they're ready for new car, this should be it in terms of funding opportunities. I would say, you know, of course, the federal government still has its $5,000 rebate available. And as we you know, in the election, we basically got the same government and they have committed to continue that so we know that will continue. Some provinces have a provincial incentive that layers on top of that. Unfortunately, we don't have that in Ontario right now, which is makes us a little bit of a laggard. Compared to other provinces, there are now six provinces with rebates, which makes it hard for Ontario to attract vehicles. So when people go looking for a vehicle, they're challenged to find one. What I would tell consumers that are looking for one and don't want to have to get on a waiting list is to look at the used market. There's a lot of great options in the used market right now. And of course, as I said, plugin drive has $1,000 incentive to buy a used EV and an extra $1,000 if you scrap an old gas car and buy used EV so so that's a great option if you can't find the new vehicle that you're looking for.   Rebecca Schwartz  24:28 In your view, Cara, what does the future of Canada look like when it comes to zero emission vehicles?   Cara Clairman  24:34 Well, I think I think pretty much everyone has realized even the most Die Hard sort of auto analysts who really really hesitated on EVs in terms of their reporting. I think even they have realized like this is coming there's no stopping it. The question mark is like how fast and I think groups like mine and other other EV sort of Advocacy type groups are really it's all about how can we get this transition to happen faster because if you agree that climate change is a crisis, we really can't wait for sort of a slow market transition, we need to do everything we can to speed it up. So if that includes incentives, that includes building codes, that includes ZEV mandate policies, that includes all sorts of local initiatives to try to encourage people to speed it up. But I do feel very optimistic that you know, we are going to see a huge swaying in the direction of EVs even by 2030.   Dan Seguin  25:37 Okay, Cara, how about we close off with some rapid fire questions?   Cara Clairman  25:42 Okay, skip the skip the favorite word. I really didn't have one.   Dan Seguin  25:46 What is the one thing you can't live without?   Cara Clairman  25:50 Coffee   Dan Seguin  25:50 What is something that challenges you?   Cara Clairman  25:53 Something that challenges me? Well, I mean, I guess the reality is in a nonprofit setting, you're always you're always having to raise money. And so that's always a challenge for anybody in the NGO sector. That's that's probably our biggest challenge.   Dan Seguin  26:09 If you could have one superpower, what would it be?   Cara Clairman  26:14 Well, I think I would love the teleportation oh my gosh, you know, I love EVs. But let's face it, there's still cars. And, you know, they still contribute to gridlock and traffic and all that and would just be so awesome to be able to just teleport to some other location.   Dan Seguin  26:32 Now, Cara, if you could turn back time and talk to your 18 year old self? What would you tell her?   Cara Clairman  26:39 I would tell her to do more public speaking. Who knew I would end up you know, doing so much public speaking in my career, I really didn't get started until I was much older. And I feel like it's a useful skill for any job just to feel confident talking in front of other people, whether that's five people or 500 people. So I would definitely say get yourself in front of an audience and practice public speaking.   Dan Seguin  27:06 And lastly, what do you currently find most interesting in your sector?   Cara Clairman  27:12 Oh, my gosh, my sector is so fascinating. You know, it's funny because I come from the electricity sector as you do. And I think there's a lot of people with this idea. That's kind of an old, stodgy, boring sector. And so I find it so exciting that there's so many opportunities for innovation. And it's not just EV, it's storage, and renewables, and there's just there's just so much of interest happening in the electricity sector. I hope young people are really looking at it for future career options.   Rebecca Schwartz  27:43 Alright, Cara, we've reached the end of another episode of The ThinkEnergy podcast. Thanks so much for joining us today. We hope you had fun.   Cara Clairman  27:50 I did. Thank you so much for having me.   Dan Seguin  27:53 We reached the end of another episode of The think energy podcast. Again, thank you for joining us today. And Rebecca. I hope you had a lot of fun.   Rebecca Schwartz  28:03 I did. Thanks for having me.   Dan Seguin  28:04 Rebecca and I will be co hosting going forward in 2021. Thanks for joining us. See you folks.

In Canada, women represent approximately one to two percent of active powerline technicians working in the electricity industry. What are the barriers that these women face? And what improvements can be made for future generations of women? Lana Norton - Executive Director and Founder at Women of Powerline Technicians as well as the Supervisor of Field Metering Services at Hydro Ottawa joins us to share her experience since graduating as one of two women from a powerline tech program in 2010. Related Content & Links:  Lana Norton - Linkedin profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lananorton/ --- Transcript: Dan Seguin  00:02 Hey, everyone, I'm Dan Seguin.   Rebecca Schwartz  00:04 And I'm Rebecca Schwartz, both from hydro Ottawa.   Dan Seguin  00:07 And we'll be hosting the ThinkEnergy podcast. So are you looking to better understand the fast changing world of energy? Every two weeks, Rebecca and I will be taking you on a tour and discuss some of the coolest trends, emerging technologies, and latest innovations within the energy sector.   Rebecca Schwartz  00:26 We'll be engaging in great conversations with game changers, thought leaders and industry leaders who welcome the opportunity to share their expertise and views with you, our listeners.   Dan Seguin  00:37 So stay tuned as we explore some traditional and some quirky facets of this industry.   Rebecca Schwartz  00:43 This is the think energy podcast.   Dan Seguin  00:50 Hey, everyone, welcome back. This is the ThinkEnergy podcast. And this episode is titled, The Wonder Woman of powerline technicians, folks, I'm Dan Seguin,   Rebecca Schwartz  01:01 and I'm Rebecca Schwartz. Hey, Dan, did you know that there are still industries that use gender job titles, and the default is always men? I'm thinking jobs like firemen, policemen, mailman,   Dan Seguin  01:14 Batman, Iron Man, Superman?   Rebecca Schwartz  01:16 Hmm, kind of like that, but not exactly. I'm also thinking about our own industry, and how within the energy sector line men is still very commonly used. You're   Dan Seguin  01:26 absolutely right, Rebecca. I think these gender job titles are an artifact from a bygone era, when women were forbidden to work, and later had very limited career options, the jobs you mentioned, and many more were deemed men's work. And so their title reflected that,   Rebecca Schwartz  01:47 right. And because it's taken so long for women to achieve any sort of equality in the workforce, and side note, we still have a very long way to go. A lot of these gender biases and male dominated fields still very much exist. And as a woman, I can say that it's kind of frustrating.   Dan Seguin  02:02 I know it's overly simplistic, but it makes you wonder if these gender bias job titles dissuaded lots of women from considering these careers,   Rebecca Schwartz  02:12 probably and I think the energy sector remains one of the least gendered diverse industries, with women making up only 22% of workers. And in the renewable energy space. It's just slightly better with 32%. But most of these are admin positions.   Dan Seguin  02:28 Hmm, I guess you're right. We do have a long way to go. Let's move on to today's big question. In Canada, women represent approximately one to 2% of active powerline technicians working in the electricity industry. What are the barriers these women face? And what improvements can be made for future generations of women?   Rebecca Schwartz  02:52 Well, I'm excited about our guest today Dan. Lana Norton is the executive director and founder at women of powerline technicians, a not for profit whose mission is to have women as equal participants in trade and technical roles in the energy sector. With a decade of field experience in Canada's electricity sector, she has held progressive roles and distribution operations. Now she's a colleague of ours here at hydro Ottawa as the supervisor of field metering services. Welcome, Lana. Maybe you can start by telling our listeners a bit about what drew you to the powerline Technician program.   Lana Norton  03:29 And thank you very much, Rebecca again for having me. Yeah, so I first attended the powerline Technician program just over 10 years ago, the journey that led me to the pursuing a career in the trades and as a powerline technician, was that it kind of it happened unexpectedly that I ended up in the trades and what kind of prompt and that was, I was a young mom. And so I became a mom at 20 and by the time I was 21, I was a single mom. In the next two years, I spent my time getting established and creating a life for my daughter and I and I was really on the path of you know, financial stability and what was that going to look like in creating a life for her and me. So to me, that was a career in the trades. And so, you know, I spent two years looking all over the province for you know, an opportunity within the powerline technician and I had one employer reach out to me and let me know of new school in Sudbury that was now offering a two year college diploma and powerline technician and from their employers where we're hiring out of that program because it would give apprentices a jumpstart on their apprenticeship and the knowledge and what we kind of brought into the trade,   Rebecca Schwartz  05:06 I understand you were the second woman to graduate from the powerline tech program back in 2010, at the first college in Ontario to offer the training, what was that experience like?   Lana Norton  05:16 I worked for it. When few people that have that have been like you that have come before you and gone through that you really do show up every day, and you're showing other people that you can do it. And at the same time, you're also building that skill and that resiliency within yourself. I was very fortunate. And, you know, I met a lot of amazing people along the way. When I was up in that power line program, you know, something that comes to mind is the, you know, I mentioned that I was a mom. And so my daughter had relocated to attend school with me. And yeah, in the time that I was up there, if she was safe, or if a daycare was closed, there were definitely instances where I had to bring her to class with me to write a test. And so, you know, me being the only woman there. When we parent and a group of 24 young men, they were like a bunch of brothers. And, you know, if I was still writing my test, and they'd finished my daughter, who was three at the time, you know, they would watch over her, so I could finish my test. So there was definitely a lot of really great things that came out of that program.   Dan Seguin  06:42 Lana, can you tell us more about the roles you've had, and what you love most about your job,   Lana Norton  06:48 Sure. So I was hired as an apprentice powerline technician. And from there, I took on a role as a field operator. And as a field operator, I worked as an intern, the system works in a 24 hour, seven days a week capacity if you're on rotating shifts. And you know, what I really enjoyed was, so as an apprentice powerline technician, you've got a view of the city, one job one specific geographical area, the time you're working on building this pole line. And and when I took on the role of the field operator, I became city wide, meaning that through like an outage that happened in the east end of the city, I was going there. And I was just as comfortable in the East operating equipment as it was in the west. And so I really enjoyed the overall view of the grid, and how the power moves throughout the city. And from there, I took on a field technician role. And so as the field technician, I was a member of distribution engineering, and asset management. And so what we did there was we did the overall planning and preparing the work to hand over to the crews to execute in the field. So there were a lot of large pull lines that we had to get built. And I was in charge of preparing that for the crew. In my current role, I'm a supervisor of metering Field Services, and I oversee a team of meter technicians. So with that, every morning, I'm preparing the team for the you know the day's jobs and revealing jobs, and timelines and the resources available to complete the work. My favorite part of the day is meeting with my team in the morning. And I get to hear their challenges and what they see in the field. And then how we can go ahead and problem solve that.   Dan Seguin  08:39 Maybe you could tell us about your nonprofit organization, women of powerline technicians and what motivated you to create it? And lastly, what are some of the benefits of joining your organization?   Lana Norton  08:52 Women of powerline technicians was first established in 2016. And we are the voice from the field committed to increasing women in trade and technical roles in Canada's electricity sector and beyond. As a national not for profit. Our mission is to have women as equal participants in the trade and the technical roles in the electricity sector. So our approach consists of two streams. We advise leaders through a gender equity lens on how to advance their diversity and inclusion goals. And women as PLT also offers programming. Our programming is open to men and women with a focus of supporting women in early mid and late careers in the trade and technical roles in our programming includes mentoring 24 seven peer group, career postings, networking events, we have a student bursary and the illuminate blog. What motivated me to create women's PLT was I'd mentioned earlier Dan, when you know when I first came through the program at cambrin I was the second one To do so, and up until that point in, in early 2010, I had heard, I'd heard rumors that there are other women doing this job in the province, but I couldn't specifically find find them and connect with them. And so after I graduated, many of the men that I made friends with in the program as they went on, and we all became employed in the province, could reach back out to me to say, Lana, like, I saw another woman working today. And so it was over that time that I was able to connect with those women and be able to, you know, like tie in the network. And it's the overall ability, knowing that you might be alone, where you are geographically, every day, because there are so few of us. But at the end of the night, you get to go home, you can log on online, and you can connect with those women. That was really the motivation, because we're not alone in this,   Dan Seguin  11:11 with skilled trade shortages across Canada. What would you tell women considering a career in this line of work? What advice would you give them, Lana?   Rebecca Schwartz  11:20 And what do you wish someone might have told you when you first started?   Lana Norton  11:24 women are able to do this. And when we look broadly, and especially in the recovery of the pandemic, we see we hear, it's out there that women are overrepresented in sectors that have been most vulnerable during recessions. And during the Coronavirus rate. So we see that women are over represented in service and hospitality and tourism. And these have all been slower to recover, when you put that in context. And you will also consider beginning of this month on October 1, there was a 10 cent an hour increase to the rate of minimum wage, bringing it up to $14.35. And you pair that with the Ontario government has has such a push on right now to support people in coming out of the pandemic, and upskilling and being able to train and, you know, take on jobs within the skilled trades, because there is a labor shortage there. But I would say that for women that this is the time that that you do need to plan your life backwards sometimes. And that. While it may not have been, you know, initially, most people I would say don't wake up in the morning thinking that the skilled trades are absolutely for me. But at any point during your life, you're you know, you're able to re evaluate that and where you want to be. And, and having, you know, a career in the trades provides that stability that that lifestyle, but maybe what you're seeking.   Dan Seguin  12:58 Now moving on, why do you think women are underrepresented in the energy sector, Lana?   Lana Norton  13:05 I think that the energy sector has been doing a great job in communicating ours and their value to customers. And through the different medium, and media platforms, we've been able to demonstrate that women are here, and that we're successful. As an industry, the expectations of our customers, I feel has shifted over time, right. And like, we see that here today with the podcast as well, that our customers are now expecting something different of energy companies and are expecting communications on the touch points of their lives. Historically, that line of communication hasn't always been open and available to our customers. And one of the effects of not having that open ended communication is that the customers don't necessarily see who's here, right. He's here, and he's keeping the light on and on the different jobs that are currently available within, you know, a local distribution company. So that visibility always hasn't been there. But it's through, you know, podcasts, that we're able to create that new line of vision into what it is we do. Right, so really speaks to you creating visibility for the sector. And so I would also say that there's always been a push to have women, you know, join the workforce, right. And I think over time that what people believe is that women were just going to start trickling in and that the numbers would just continue to grow and grow and grow with the times. And and we just haven't seen that to the effect that I think everybody thought that we would and so creating further visibility for what it is we do, really helps but when it also speaks to some of the historical underrepresentation meaning that you know, the career has been harder to find. And so if you didn't necessarily have a parent working within the energy sector, you may be yourself you weren't sure how to how to get that started.   Dan Seguin  15:13 Now I just learned from a recent interview you gave that in Canada, only one to 2% of powerline technicians are women, how can we close the gap in advancing the role of women in this sector?   Lana Norton  15:25 We're still sitting at the one to 2% as powerline technicians. And so how we can work in advance that number, quicken the pace of change. We've seen some brilliant initiatives and programs happen as of lately. So one of the ones I'll speak about is a Algonquin College, they put together a program called "We saved you a seat". And what that program does, it saves 30% of the seats for women in the top five STEM programs. powerline technician being one of them. And so you know, the research is there on the tipping point. At which point, you know, a class balance shifts, and that, you know, you no longer feel like you're one of the few but the conversation the dynamics in the class have started to shift. So 30% really starts mixing the gender balance. So we're seeing progressive movements in programs like that come forward, I also think that we need to set goals, and that we need to target the talent. You know, without setting a goal becomes very difficult to achieve. And we need to be intentional about who we're targeting. And you know, the talent that we want to come come work for us. It's also time that we change the conversation. Since the 80s, this conversation has been like more women in skilled trades, we're looking for more women in skilled trades. But the conversation I believe that you know, would be valuable and having is start explaining to, to the to the talents of the people that we want to come work for us what it is we exactly do like that we are building energy systems to power our future. we're advancing smart grid technology for netzero communities. And we're investing in energy storage. I think that would be a thing that you know, the new talent like they want to connect with, right? And then we're finding people that align with the goals that we're looking to achieve.   Rebecca Schwartz  17:38 So as the chair of the program Advisory Committee for the electrical engineering and the powerline Technician program for Algonquin College, what are you learning from new students and graduates,   Lana Norton  17:50 the new students are informed and they're prepared. And they have access to more data, more podcasts, more blogs, and more social media than we've ever seen before. And with that comes a lot of insight to to how things are evolving and changing in the trade and what those expectations are. And as leaders, we need to remain mindful of the knowledge that they're able to bring to the job. And you know, when we look at the electricity sector, there's been such an emphasis placed on tradition, right? Like, we are very traditional and how we do things and for the last 120 years, we've always set poles and, and the wires and that's our business and, and this new generation, they have a lot of insight and ideas. How to transform things and being able to take that information and and keep them engaged is something that, you know, I'm continually learning from that program.   Dan Seguin  19:00 In your opinion, how should employers in the energy sector be attracting, recruiting and retaining the next generation of women in trades?   Rebecca Schwartz  19:12 Basically, Dan is asking, what do women want?   Lana Norton  19:15 if we're looking at what women want, and they're looking for equal pay equal leadership and equal opportunities and electricity sector does a good job of this. You know, like when we look at equal pay, for example, that's a given based on the fact that we have a union in here and whether you like all level one apprentices are paid the same, all level two apprentices are paid the same. You know, and we have that and I may not be clear to somebody on the outside looking in, but that is something that is already there and given when you come to the table. So I think we're partway there. And when we look at equal leadership, although women are underrepresented within the electricity sector, the Equal Opportunities are here. Right? that women are given, you know, being given a chance to, to work their way into leadership, to take on different roles. And so in time, we will see that leadership comes, but, you know, like, equal leadership. But for now, you know, the pay and the opportunities are here, and inviting more women to, you know, come into the organization and join that just means that there's more of us among the ranks in order to move into leadership positions.   Rebecca Schwartz  20:51 As we talk about inclusivity and making sure that everyone belongs at work. Can you speak to some of the biggest challenges for women, it is clearly still a male dominated field. But is that changing? And is it fast enough   Lana Norton  21:05 for people living at the forefront of change? And speaking about the women, sometimes it can feel like it's simply just not fast enough. And then there are some that when reflecting on the history of providing an electrical service over the last 120 years, when all of the gains and diversity has been hiring a handful of women in the last decade, they can simply feel like the transition is too fast, only look at our energy systems and climate change. The reality is that it's simply not fast enough. It's a conversation about being better than we are today. And better includes diverse voices, and perspectives.   Dan Seguin  21:50 What excites you about the energy field of the future? What would you like to see or maybe even lead, we exist   Lana Norton  21:58 in a place where power has become a necessity and time without it is measured in minutes. And this speaks to the astounding reliability of our electrical systems and the people who are accountable to our customers. As we look to the future, I'm really excited by distributed energy resources and what they bring to our grid capabilities, and the ways that we will continue to evolve to meet our customer expectations. In the future, I would like to contribute in a larger way to the multilateral grid sustainability, and energy policy. For now though, I'm enjoying my time the metering team.   Rebecca Schwartz  22:40 Alright, Lana, how about we close off with some rapid fire questions?   Lana Norton  22:44 I'm ready.   Rebecca Schwartz  22:45 What is your favorite word?   Lana Norton  22:46 eliminate?   Rebecca Schwartz  22:48 What is one thing that you can't live without? My family? What is something that challenges you?   Lana Norton  22:53 Time   Rebecca Schwartz  22:54 And if you could have one superpower, what would it be?   Lana Norton  22:58 That I was good at telling jokes?   Rebecca Schwartz  23:00 And if you could turn back time to talk to your 18 year old self? What would you tell her?   Lana Norton  23:06 That you're going to enjoy the person that you become and you're going to be fiercely independent? Alright, Lana,   Rebecca Schwartz  23:12 lastly, what do you currently find the most interesting in your sector,   Lana Norton  23:17 the willpower of others, in recognising the need for change to transform our electricity sector to meet future climate targets, and energies   Dan Seguin  23:27 Well, I know, we've reached the end of another episode of The ThinkEnergy podcast. Thank you very much for joining us today. I hope you had a lot of fun.   Lana Norton  23:36 I did. Thank you very much for having me.   Dan Seguin  23:40 We've reached the end of another episode of The think energy podcast. Again, thank you for joining us today. And Rebecca. I hope you had a lot of fun.   Rebecca Schwartz  23:49 I did. Thanks for having me.   Dan Seguin  23:51 Rebecca and I will be co hosting going forward in 2021. Thanks for joining us. See you folks.

When you try and wrap your head around what it will take to get Canada to net-zero by 2050, do you wonder what kind of energy transformation that will entail? With less than 30 years to hit net-zero greenhouse gas emissions, today's topic for discussion is what it will take to revolutionize the way we consume and use all forms of energy. Here with us is Vince Brescia, President and CEO of the Ontario Energy Association, to share how we can achieve this goal. Related Content & Links:  Vince Brescia - Linkedin profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vincebrescia/ --- Transcript: Dan Seguin  00:02 Hey, everyone, I'm Dan Seguin.   Rebecca Schwartz  00:04 And I'm Rebecca Schwartz, both from Hydro Ottawa.   Dan Seguin  00:07 And we'll be hosting the ThinkEnergy podcast. So are you looking to better understand the fast changing world of energy? Every two weeks, Rebecca and I will be taking you on a tour and discuss some of the coolest trends, emerging technologies, and latest innovations within the energy sector   Rebecca Schwartz  00:26 We'll be engaging in great conversations with game changers, thought leaders and industry leaders who welcome the opportunity to share their expertise and views with you, our listeners.   Dan Seguin  00:37 So stay tuned as we explore some traditional and some quirky facets of this industry.   Rebecca Schwartz  00:43 This is the ThinkEnergy podcast.   Dan Seguin  00:50 Hey, everyone, welcome back. This is the ThinkEnergy podcast and I'm Dan Seguin.   Rebecca Schwartz  00:55 And I'm Rebecca Schwartz. In November 2020, the Government of Canada introduced a bill setting the stage to achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Dan, how old will you be in 2050?   Dan Seguin  01:08 I don't know, Rebecca, you have to ask me then, when I wake up from my cryogenically frozen state along with Walt Disney, that's the plan.   Rebecca Schwartz  01:17 Okay, good to know   Dan Seguin  01:19 When you try and wrap your head around what it will take to get Canada to net zero by 2050, do you wonder what kind of energy transformation that will entail?   Rebecca Schwartz  01:30 I'm still thinking about what you said about being cryogenically frozen. But yes, I think it's going to be a massive undertaking and necessary one. Ontario currently produces 163 megatons of greenhouse gas emissions. And 76% of that is from emissions stemming from energy use.   Dan Seguin  01:51 Right. But when we talk about energy, we're not talking about electricity. We're talking about refined petroleum, primarily used for transportation and natural gas to heat our homes and buildings.   Rebecca Schwartz  02:05 That's right. Those two sectors, transportation and buildings make up 76% of the provinces greenhouse gas emissions, however, the electricity sector makes up only 16%. So here's today's big question. What are the keys to net zero success?   Dan Seguin  02:23 It's interesting, because, as you know, despite what the electricity sector in Ontario has achieved in terms of renewable energy, and curbing its greenhouse gas emissions, the conversation almost always still revolves around the electricity sector when it comes to climate change. Which brings us to today's show.   Rebecca Schwartz  02:45 Recently, the Ontario Energy Association released a white paper that reviewed various elements of the provinces energy system and the options available to achieve zero emissions by 2050.   Dan Seguin  02:57 Our guest today is Vince Brescia, President and CEO of the Ontario Energy Association.   Rebecca Schwartz  03:07 Vince, welcome to the show. Perhaps you can start us off by telling us a little bit about yourself and what the Ontario Energy Association does.   Vince Brescia  03:15 Thanks, Rebecca, and thanks for having me on the show. I'm the president and CEO of the Ontario Energy Association. I've been active in public policy work and research since the late 1980s, I guess, inside the government and in various capacities outside of the government, then I've been here at the OEA for the last five years and really enjoying it. Here's of who the OEA is we represent the the breadth of Ontario's energy industry. We have power producers of all the different fuel types, you know, whether that's nuclear, hydro, wind, solar, etc. We have demand response and storage. We have the large electricity distributors representing 75% of Ontario's customer base. We also have the natural gas distributors representing over 99% of Ontario's customers in terms of what we do the OEA conducts Public Policy Research and advocates on behalf of its members. And we also provide forums for education on Energy and Environment issues. So that's a quick snapshot of me and the OEA   Dan Seguin  04:27 Now Vince with respect to the government of Canada's goal to reach net zero emissions by 2050. What is the role of the Ontario Energy Association in this initiative?   Vince Brescia  04:40 Thanks. Yeah, reaching net zero by 2050 will be a massive undertaking, perhaps the largest infrastructure projects in our country's history. So our role at the OEA is going to be to leverage the expertise of our members and advise governments at all levels about how we can make this transition happen. while still maintaining the affordability and reliability of our energy supply, it's going to be a big challenge. And we're all going to need to work together to achieve this goal.   Rebecca Schwartz  05:08 So what kinds of major transformation will it take to achieve the government's goals?   Vince Brescia  05:14 I'll break it down in a couple of different ways. In Ontario, 76% of our emissions come from the energy we use. So reaching our goals will require a major transformation of our energy system. 23% of those emissions come from industrial processes and product use 10% of agriculture, percent based so that gives you the full spectrum of the emissions in Ontario. But because we're an Energy Association, we've focused on the energy component and the transformation required in the energy system. Or there are some overlaps. For example, we're hopeful some of those waste emissions can be turned into energy just as an example. But then turning to energy. Currently in Ontario 80% of the energy we use comes from fossil fuel sources. 48% is from petroleum primarily for transportation uses. Another 28% is from natural gas primarily to heat our homes and buildings. 16% comes from electricity, which is now a clean energy source. So altogether, achieving our goal is going to require us to transform 80% of our energy system. That's a big project. And the three big sources of emissions in Ontario are transportation, buildings and industry. Altogether, those account for almost 80% of our emissions. So we're going to have to swap up the fuels that we use in transportation, we're going to need to decarbonize our building heating systems. And many of our industries and businesses are going to have to adapt to new fuel sources. This gives you a sense of the scale of the challenge. But also with comes that comes with that is a large opportunity of the to go to go hand in hand.   Dan Seguin  06:56 2015 is 30 years away. But it's fair to say that Ontario's emissions have changed a lot in the past 30 years. Vince, can you give us a snapshot of how our energy use has changed since 1990. What sectors and provinces have improved the most?   Vince Brescia  07:16 In 2019. Just to give you a sense of where we're at Canada emitted 730 mega tons of ghgs of that Ontario represented 163 mega tons or 22% of the national total. Over time since 1990, Ontario's emissions have declined from 180 megatons to 163, which is a reduction of about 17 megatons or 9%. We still have another 19 megatons to go to meet our 2030 target of 30% below 2005 levels. That's not factoring in the recent national commitment by our Prime Minister to reduce emissions by 40 to 45%. By 2030. In terms of you asked about how you know how the provinces have, have compared and fared nationally, Ontario has made the largest largest progress nationally. That came primarily from the elimination of coal fired generation in the province. That one policy change resulted in a 31 mega ton reduction reduction in emissions from its peak in 2005. However, a lot of those emissions reductions in Ontario have been offset by increases in emissions from our transportation sector since 1990. Nationally, to give you a sense of how other provinces have done, you know, to the east of Ontario, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Quebec together, have reduced emissions by 19 megatons in total since 2005. However, west of Ontario, the emissions profile has been rising. So altogether, nationally, our emissions have been flat since 2005. And if you look back to 1991, they're up from the 600 megatons to the 730 we're at now.   Rebecca Schwartz  08:57 Vince, the Ontario Energy Association outlines six recommendations in the report, can you walk us through what those are at a high level and why you believe they're the keys to netzero success,   Vince Brescia  09:09 I'll do a quick walk through. Our first recommendation is that we need to move as quickly as we can on transportation fuel switching. And that's because we have almost all of the technologies we need to affordably transform the sector and because transportation is our largest source of emissions. So that's what we need to tackle first, and we can do it affordably. Second is we need to start reducing emissions in our natural gas system is our second largest source of emissions. And if we get time later, we can talk a bit about some of the things we can do in that area. The third thing we're going to need to do is to plan to expand our electricity system, all this fuel switching. I've been talking about like for example in transportation, and we're going to need it in industry as well. We're going to need a lot more electricity and we're going to need every type of resource. We're going to need nuclear, hydro, wind, solar storage demand response transmission, you name it, we're going to need the whole package to meet the amount of electricity that's needed. Some people talk about a doubling or tripling of our electricity. Some, we're gonna need a lot more electricity as we transform our economy. The fourth thing that we recommended is that we start to accelerate accelerate hydrogen programs and pilots, we're gonna need a lot of hydrogen in our future, because there's certain types of industrial processes and activities, where it's not so easy to swap out the fossil fuels that we use. And hydrogen seems like a highly likely candidate, or hydrogen based fuels. But we have a bit of work to do to develop those and make them affordable for customers. So we need governments to lean in and help with pilot projects, and put their thumb on the scale, so to speak, to accelerate this economy and help build the infrastructure that we need to service the economy. Fifth recommendation we made is that there be comprehensive energy planning, not just electricity policy. In Ontario, we have tended to have a history of focusing just on the electricity system. And you've heard me mentioned earlier, it currently only accounts for 16% of our total energy use. We now now need to think about our whole energy system holistically. And make a detailed plan about what it's going to cost, what the most likely pathways are. The final recommendation is that we're going to need federal, provincial and municipal coordination. All three levels of governments are active in the space, all are having an impact and can have an impact. But we're not going to be successful if they're not coordinating their efforts, or if they're working at cross purposes, or fighting each other's or turning issues into political wedges, you know, against each other. We need to all work together because you know, as I mentioned earlier, this is a massive undertaking. And if we're going to be successful, we all need to work together in coordination. So that's a quick summary of our recommendations.   Dan Seguin  12:11 You note that in order for the transition to be successful in Ontario, careful attention needs to be paid to three core pillars that are the underpinning of the energy system. What are those?   Vince Brescia  12:24 Yeah, thanks for asking. Now we know from from experience that are three critical pillars that underpin public support for our energy system. The first is sustainability, which encompasses the net zero discussion we are having today. our energy system must be sustainable over the long term, and that includes ensuring that we utilize energy in a way that ensures the environmental sustainability of our communities, and of our planet. Of course, the two other pillars, though, are affordability, and reliability. We have recent experience in Ontario that significant increases in energy costs lead to very negative customer and voter reactions. We must keep our customers informed and supportive of the transition, or they will rebel against the effort. Finally, our modern economy is also very dependent upon reliable energy. customers expect and depend on energy being available when they need it. If we go too long, without energy to heat our homes or power to run our economy, or God forbid, keep our cell phones charged. It causes major disruption for all of us. So our transition must ensure we continue to provide an energy in the reliable fashion that our consumers have grown accustomed to,   Rebecca Schwartz  13:36 In your opinion, Vince, what are some of the biggest barriers and challenges to achieve the 2015 zero emission targets? For instance, are there any activities that we can't fully eliminate?   Vince Brescia  13:47 Yes, some of the biggest barriers and challenges to achieving our goals will come from what some call the hard to abate sectors. These sectors are characterized by high material volumes, and finding alternative processes that are affordable, it's going to be a challenge for us. These are also some of our largest sources of emissions globally. And the big three are cement, steel and chemicals. Cement is one of the largest sources of global emission each tonne of cement produces about a half a tonne of carbon dioxide. And this has two main components. One is from the chemical reaction of turning limestone, which is calcium carbonate, and to lime, which releases co2. The other is from the energy component that we use to cook the limestone to over 1000 degrees Celsius, which is typically fossil fuels. So you have two elements, you have both an energy element and a chemical element that leads to large emissions from that sector. And that's going to be a challenge to decarbonize that sector. Steel is another one steel is the highest emitting industry in the world. It produces 3.5 Giga tons of co2 globally. Like cement, they're both energy In process admissions, we make primary steel out of iron ore, which is iron oxide, we add coal to the iron ore for its heat energy to essentially boil the you're kind of like we did we do for the cement, and for its chemical properties that allow us to strip off the oxygen atoms. This results in a chemical process where you end up with pure iron and co2 emissions. We produce steel in Ontario. And we also produce a lot of cars, which use a lot of steel and steel and a lot of other processes. So we're Ontario is going to have to tackle this one head on and it's going to be a challenge. The third big challenging areas, chemicals, petrochemicals and plastic production are the other large area of emissions globally and Ontario. There's a more diverse range of products here, but the largest one is ammonia, which we use for fertilizer in agriculture. And the next are ethylene and propylene, which are the most important ingredients and plastics. Again, there's going to be some difficulties and challenges and a lot of technology required to decarbonize those sectors.   Rebecca Schwartz  16:07 Let's talk about opportunities and leveraging technology and innovation. What's exciting you or giving you hope for the future?   Vince Brescia  16:14 There are some activities, we're going to need a lot of Innovation and Learning before we'll be able to eliminate emissions. According to the International Energy Agency, almost half the emissions cuts necessary for us to achieve net zero will come from technologies that are not in the marketplace yet. Some of the more exciting areas that are important and looked like they have significant potential, I would say are the following three hydrogen and hydrogen based fuels. governments around the world are developing hydrogen strategies. It looks to be very competitive globally, every major western country is working on a hydrogen strategy. And Ontario in Canada have some leading companies in this area like we have Enbridge Cummins hydrogenics, new flyer Ballard loop energy, planetary hydrogen, hydro energy, it's going to be a very exciting area is watching the hydrogen economy develop. That's what I'm excited about. The other one is energy storage, particularly long duration energy storage. We store lots of energy, now we have the technology. The costs are coming down fast. But what's really going to help us transform our economy is the ability to store energy for a long period of times and learn to do that affordably. There's lots of people looking at that and working on it, it's going to be a significant growth area. And I'm very excited about it. The third big one is is carbon capture utilization and storage, we are absolutely going to need carbon capture and storage if we're going to meet our netzero goals. One of the examples is cement, which I talked about earlier, I talked about this process where we boil the limestone and the chemical reaction leads to a bunch of emissions. The only thing I'm really hearing about from experts who know a lot more about this stuff than I do is that we're gonna need carbon capture to capture the carbon dioxide that comes from that cement. And cement. You know, as I mentioned, it's a very large global emissions producers. And that's just one example. There are lots of places where we're going to need carbon capture in our future to meet our goals. So there's a there's there's three areas that I'm excited about where I think we're going to see a lot of growth.   Dan Seguin  18:21 How important is energy affordability for Ontarians?   Vince Brescia  18:26 It's critically important. History has shown us that Ontarians react negatively to energy cost increase. If the government's Transition Plans a significant negative impact on energy and affordability. Families and businesses will rebel against the plan and the plan will get derailed. Oh, it is critically important. We have to keep it in mind.   Dan Seguin  18:45 What lessons can be learned from when Ontario's electricity rates increase to pay for renewable investments? And how can these lessons be applied to Canada's goal for 2050?   Vince Brescia  18:59 It's a great question. I'll give you my perspective. I think one important lesson we can learn from that experience is that sudden large spikes in energy costs are very upsetting to people and they draw lots of attention. They draw lots of political attention, lots of media attention. I think you can socialize the idea that costs may have to arise incrementally over time and get people used to the idea. However, most households don't pay much attention to public policy discussions and debates. They just look at their bill. They compare their last bill to this one, or this month's bill compared to this month last year to see how it's doing. So whatever plan we develop, if we can avoid sudden spikes, I think you can invoke you can avoid the negative public reactions, like the one we saw. That's what we can learn from that previous experience.   Rebecca Schwartz  19:47 Ontario's electricity system is one of the cleanest in the world. What does removing natural gas from the provinces supply mean for the reliability of the grid?   Vince Brescia  19:58 It's a great question. It's one that's getting discussed more. In the current climate, Ontario's Nash natural gas plants were built only recently to replace the reliability service offered by the coal plants we were shutting down. Once we had the capabilities of these natural gas plants in place, we were able to add a large volume of renewables to our system, resulting Ontario having one of the cleanest electricity systems in the world. These gas plants are like a backup to our electricity system. Most of the time the plants are not utilized much while we power the system with you know, nuclear, hydro, wind and solar and other other sources. That's why our system is so clean currently, because the plants are set seldom run at full capacity, so we get fewer emissions from them. However, when we have a large spike in demand on a really cool day, or a really hot day, these plants kick in to help maintain system reliability. They can be deployed on relatively short notice to meet urgent needs. Like the coal plants that they replace, these plants have access to something that is critically important for grid reliability, vast amounts of energy storage, this capability is not easy or affordable to replace. So we're going to need the services of these plants for some time before we're going to be able to replace them,   Rebecca Schwartz  21:12 can we replace natural gas to heat our homes and buildings and what will it take to make it happen? Vince,   Vince Brescia  21:19 we are going to need to maintain our gases to heat our homes and buildings for some time, we can change what goes into the system to make it cleaner and we can reduce the amount of energy we need from the system. I'll try and put it into perspective for you. The natural gas system currently provides about three times the peak energy of our electricity system. In other words, we would need to quadruple our current electricity system to meet the current peak heat demand if we wanted to transition to electric heat across Ontario. To give you a sense of the scale of that, if we were going to replace all of the gas system with electricity that would require about 24 nuclear generating stations. Or it would take 30 to 50,000 wind turbines paired with long duration energy storage, acquiring about 1.3 million acres for siting, you get a sense that this would be a pretty massive undertaking, and would probably be very expensive for customers. At the same time, we are going to have to expand our electricity system to deal with significant electrification and transportation, which we've talked about, and an industry which we've also talked about. So if we were to add the electrification of the natural gas system on top of that, that would likely not be achievable. So this informs the view that we should be looking at ways to decarbonize the natural gas system. And we're doing that now. Firstly, we've begun to blend renewable natural gas into our system, which takes methane from waste that was otherwise go into the atmosphere. Methane is a very potent greenhouse gas, making this a carbon negative activity. We're also blending green emissions free hydrogen into our gas system. Going forward, we'll be continuously exploring technological advances that allow us to increase the amount of that blend of hydrogen and renewable natural gas into our system. In addition, if we were to pair our current heating system with heat pumps, we can make a significant reduction in the amount of natural gas needed to heat our homes and buildings. On top of all of that, you know, research has shown us that we can affordably achieve significant reductions in the amount of natural gas use through building energy efficiency measures. So when you put all of those things together, you know, our view is that we can deeply decarbonize the natural gas system, and do that relatively affordability which reduces the scale relatively affordably as well and it reduces the scale of the electricity expansion that is going to be required. In Ontario for all these other activities we've talked about.   Dan Seguin  23:52 As we know from your report, refined petroleum makes up 48% of Ontario's energy use mostly for transportation. Are electric vehicles the answer to the transportation sectors greenhouse gas emissions problem here in Ontario.   Vince Brescia  24:10 Yes, they are a large part of the answer. Transportation as you mentioned, it's Ontario's largest source of emissions. passenger vehicles currently make up 57% of our transportation emissions, electric electrification of these passenger vehicles and a smaller short haul trucks and transit uses this can be done affordably with current technology, very exciting. I expect this transition to really accelerate and the next while for heavier and long haul transportation, we may need other solutions to be part of the mix. Long Haul and heavy transportation is less amenable to electrification because the batteries get too big and heavy and refueling time, you know adds significantly to cost for these uses. You know, we could be looking at learning compressed natural gas and renewable natural gas to to get to net zero most analysts seem to think that hydrogen fuel cells will be an important part of the long term substitution for heavy transportation. exciting part, as I've mentioned, we have a number of leading hydrogen companies in Canada and Ontario that are, that are making these these fuel cells. So it's also an economic opportunity for our province. And also, you know, you think of the materials for batteries and some of the the steel and inputs to the these vehicles that we're talking about, there's another economic opportunity there for Ontario. For some other transportations like ships and planes, we're just going to need alternative fuels. And again, the batteries be too heavy, you need a high energy density of the fuel. And we have, we may be looking at variants on hydrogen fuels like ammonia, that are very, very dense in energy in order to the fuel all those activities. And what we're going to do to try and figure out as a way to develop those supply chains affordably to set out those users.   Rebecca Schwartz  26:04 Alright, then, how about we close off with some rapid fire questions?   Vince Brescia  26:08 All right,   Rebecca Schwartz  26:09 what is your favorite word?   Vince Brescia  26:11 Reason   Rebecca Schwartz  26:12 What is one thing you can't live without?   Vince Brescia  26:14 Air And Starbucks coffee.   Rebecca Schwartz  26:17 What is something that challenges you?   Vince Brescia  26:19 golf. I keep trying, but it keeps challenging me.   Rebecca Schwartz  26:22 If you could have one superpower events, what would it be?   Vince Brescia  26:26 Time Travel   Rebecca Schwartz  26:27 If you could turn back time and talk to your 18 year old self? What would you tell him?   Vince Brescia  26:32 Oh, with my new superpower, I'd say invest all your savings and Berkshire Hathaway and leave it there.   Rebecca Schwartz  26:38 And lastly, what do you currently find most interesting in your sector?   Vince Brescia  26:42 You know what I love the technological innovation that is taking place in our sector. I mean, we've been talking about it today. It's exciting. It's a very exciting time to be part of the sector. I'm learning every day about new technologies and processes. And I love it.   Dan Seguin  26:59 Well, Vince, we've reached the end of another episode of The think energy podcast. Thank you so much for joining us today. I hope you had a lot of fun.   Vince Brescia  27:08 I did have a lot of fun. Thank you so much for having me. This was great.   Rebecca Schwartz  27:13 I sure hope you enjoyed this episode of ThinkEnergy podcast. If so, please head over to iTunes and give us a review and subscribe.   Dan Seguin  27:21 And for show notes and bonus content visit ThinkEnergy.ca. Also, be sure to tell your friends and colleagues about us.   Rebecca Schwartz  27:30 Thank you for listening.

Storm season is truly any season. And during a global pandemic, as we've become more dependent on an uninterrupted supply of electricity (so we can work and learn from home), the consequences of storm-related power outages have been heightened. So here's today's big question: How are utilities facing the eye of the storm? What's involved during these critical times to keep the system and people protected from outages? To answer these questions today, we have the Director of System Operations & Grid Automation, who leads all restoration efforts for Hydro Ottawa: Joseph Muglia. --- Related Content & Links:  Hydro Ottawa outage map: https://hydroottawa.com/outages --- Transcript: Dan Seguin  00:02 Hey everyone, I'm Dan Seguin.   Rebecca Schwartz  00:04 And I'm Rebecca Schwartz, both from hydro Ottawa.   Dan Seguin  00:07 And we'll be hosting the ThinkEnergy podcast. So are you looking to better understand the fast changing world of energy? Every two weeks, Rebecca and I will be taking you on a tour and discuss some of the coolest trends, emerging technologies, and latest innovations within the energy sector   Rebecca Schwartz  00:26 We'll be engaging in great conversations with game changers, thought leaders and industry leaders who welcome the opportunity to share their expertise and views with you, our listeners.   Dan Seguin  00:37 So stay tuned as we explore some traditional and some quirky facets of this industry. This is the ThinkEnergy podcast. Hey, everyone, welcome back to the ThinkEnergy podcast. I'm Dan Seguin. We're going to do things a bit differently today. Instead of our regularly scheduled program, I'd like to introduce my new co-host, hydro Ottawa's very own social media guru, and content and communications planning officer. Rebecca Schwartz.   Rebecca Schwartz  01:12 Hi, Dan. Hi, everyone.   Dan Seguin  01:14 Rebecca, welcome to your first episode. As a co host of the think energy podcast. Maybe you can introduce yourself to our audience, and what drew you to the energy sector?   Rebecca Schwartz  01:26 Thanks, Dan. I'm super excited to be joining the ThinkEnergy podcast for my first podcast ever. as Dan said, I manage hydro Ottawa as social media platforms. But what a nice change to be able to talk to you all in a little bit more of a personal way today. What drew me to the energy sector has to be the fact that everyone uses energy. It's meaningful to work in a sector that influences everyone in such a powerful way. Pun intended. When the lights go out, I'm reminded of just how connected we all are sharing the same grid and enduring outages together. It makes me feel like I'm part of something big, especially when I can communicate important updates to customers during these times. In general, though, with increasing environmental concerns and plenty of innovative technologies being developed, it's an exciting time for the energy sector. It keeps my job interesting and challenging.   Dan Seguin  02:18 Rebecca and I are going to co host episodes going forward. Think of dynamic duos like Laurel and Hardy. Fred and ginger Mulder and Scully.   Rebecca Schwartz  02:31 Ummm I don't know any of those people.   Dan Seguin  02:33 Okay, how about Jay Z and Beyonce, Mary Kate and Ashley, Brock and Michelle? Ah,   Rebecca Schwartz  02:40 yes. Okay. I promise to brush up on my Dynamic Duo history.   Dan Seguin  02:45 The title of this week's episode is "the eye of the storm", Rebecca. I don't know if it's just me. But it seems like every season is storm season. Nowadays, in Ottawa, we've had more than our fair share of winter ice storms, spring floods, and in the fall of 2018 tornadoes.   Rebecca Schwartz  03:04 Well, warm weather and summer sunshine tend to give us a false sense of security from power outages. But the truth is summer storms are a consistent threat, thanks to extreme heat and humidity, particularly when that combination manifests into dangerous heat waves, lightning, strong winds, hail and thunderstorms. Mother Nature doesn't seem to differentiate anymore between when storm season begins and ends anymore. It's like she's thrown up her hands justifiably annoyed with us about climate change, which means utilities must always be prepared for any extreme weather event no matter the time of year.   Dan Seguin  03:43 storm season is truly any season. And during a global pandemic, as we've become more dependent on an uninterrupted supply of electricity so we can work and learn from home, the consequences of storm related power outages has been heightened. So here's today's big question. How are utilities facing the eye of the storm? What's involved during these critical times to keep the system and people protected from outages?   Rebecca Schwartz  04:15 To answer these questions today, I have director of system operations and grid automation, who leads all restoration efforts for the capitals utility. Hydro Ottawa's Joseph Muglia.   Dan Seguin  04:29 Hey, welcome, Joseph. It's great to speak to you again. I think a lot of people want to know what it takes to keep the lights on for a city like Ottawa. Given your role, I'm assuming you've been in the office and in the field throughout the pandemic. Can you tell us a bit about what the director of systems operations and grid automation does?   Joseph Muglia  04:53 Thanks for having me, Dan. So first of all, my role is really comprised of three different groups within the within the company with, I would say four areas of responsibility. So starting off, like, in my team, I've got the substation group, which takes power from our provincial supplier and basically helps to distribute that power across the city through the wires and things but, but the substations are the main points where the power is coming from into our different communities. The second very important group within my team is system operations and system office. So system office really is, I would say, the control group. So they're taking the power that comes from the substations and, and distributing it properly across the city through the lines. So basically, they have the control of like limiting power, they can shut power off in certain areas, if we have to work on wires, they're doing that control of the flow of electrons throughout the system. So in an emergency, they can do isolation so that our crews can work safely. If there's any sort of power outage that's required, like a planned power outage, they can do that, so that we can work safely and upgrade our equipment. So that's really the role of system office, system office and system operations. They're also part of system operations is also our 24/7, and emergency response as well as our field ops. So they're really monitoring the system on a 24 hour, seven day a week basis. So if there's any issues that go on at nighttime, while people are sleeping, if there's a storm that hits during the day, or at night, or on the weekends, it's our 24/7, and our field operators that are responding to those calls. Initially, especially now if the call gets more involved, we we usually bring in additional forces, but it's really the 24/7 folks that are out responding. And finally, the third part of of my team is the metering group. So really, they're they're the folks that are distributing the power to our individual customers, every single customer in the in our service territory is involved with the metering group. So whether it's commercial, industrial, institutional, doesn't matter. Our metering group are the ones that that interface with our customers.   Rebecca Schwartz  07:25 So Joseph, let's talk about the pandemic that shall not be named, shall we? Sorry, huge Harry Potter fan here. So what kinds of things have you and your team been doing to keep power flowing through homes and businesses during the pandemic? Was there more stress knowing just how much more people relied on it to stay connected?   Joseph Muglia  07:45 So that's a good question. So, you know, typically, pre pandemic, we know where work centers are, we know where the offices are, throughout the city. And, and so we can sort of focus our efforts to make sure that those areas that are, you know, largely populated with folks that are working, that power is not interrupted as much as possible. The problem with the pandemic was that the entire city became work centers. So all of the homes became work centers, in addition to a lot of the work centers that already existed. So now what happened was, the emphasis went to keeping everybody connected as much as possible all the time. Because now you're not just affecting the offices of Hydro Ottawa, but you're affecting the offices of Hydro Ottawa, throughout the entire city, where everybody is basically living. And that's true for all the businesses so, so this caused us to put more emphasis on our infrastructure, make sure that our infrastructure is kept up, you know, maintenance wise to make sure that we're limiting our outages, for instance, to I think we limited them to two hours maximum. And that creates like a cost and a logistics issue for sure for us, right? Because we're not taking advantage of a full day anymore, or like in a residential area where we would be doing upgrades for instance, where we could take the power out through system office, as I mentioned earlier, we can take that power out for six or eight hours now. It was you know, truncated down to just a couple of hours. So, that becomes very difficult to to make sure that our crews are working as efficiently as they can. But it was it was very limiting for us from a from a construction perspective. So, yeah, definitely more pressure again on the focus of our assets and the focus of our our construction crews may Making sure that they're staying busy and doingas effective work as possible throughout the day,   Dan Seguin  10:05 It seems like storm season is every season now, what kind of emergency preparedness planning or training goes on, in order to be crisis ready for any storm?   Joseph Muglia  10:17 At hydro Ottawa, we regularly keep our folks up to date with all of the training required on a day to day basis for their jobs. In addition, storm preparation involves more like training on, I guess, tabletop exercises and mocking different disasters that could potentially happen. So we've introduced that into our training as well, which we're putting a lot more of our folks through that training now. Because some things that were that have been identified to us was that we've got this core group of people that are well trained in that, but we need to expand that team so that we've got additional resources in you know, that can that can respond to different emergencies. So we're working on a training schedule now thatwill encompass the entire year, that will, at regular intervals, train different folks across the organization to be able to respond to these types of things. In addition to that, also at the contractor and the supplier level, we have to maintain good relationships with them, and relationships that we wouldn't normally have in the past, or we may not have had in the past. So we've got better, I think, better relationships, working relationships with folks that can deliver us materials or provide assistance, whether it's mutual aid assistance, or contracted forces that can come in and help us in the event that we need the help. Like if we've been hit with a big emergency or a big incident across the city where we've got more work to do than our crews can handle. For instance,   Rebecca Schwartz  12:06 Working for Hydro Ottawa's social media team, I know just how important communication is, from sharing our storm readiness to providing information when an outage happens, it's caused status and Restoration Times. So Joseph, what goes into establishing accurate Restoration Times? Is it based on historical data?   Joseph Muglia  12:27 So Restoration Times are a very difficult thing. And I don't care what utility you're involved with. But restoration time is really one of those things that continues to be a challenge year after year. Initially, when we see an issue on a feeder or a conductor somewhere, the initial restoration time is generated through historical data that we would have. And that data is based on what we think the issue might be. And again, it's from our system office folks that will see you know, a particular type of issue that they're seeing on the system and the historical data will give an approximate time of restoration. Now, nothing beats a field visit, right? So that initial restoration time will be generated automatically. And then, in the meantime, we've got crews that are dispatched and are on the way to whatever the issue is in the field, once they get there, they're able to better assess what's involved. So when they get there, it might be completely different than what you know, our historical data was telling us or what system office was seeing in the field. And so the field crews are then able to better approximate what the restoration time will be. And then as the restoration is proceeding, there could be other factors that are that come into it and affect restoration time again, and which is sometimes why you see a restoration time getting shorter or longer because it you know, there might be other equipment in the field that we didn't initially know was going to be included. And ends up being included in the restoration as well. So it's a very tricky art, I would say not much of a science. It's more of an art.   Dan Seguin  14:24 Joseph, you've done some videos for us. And most recently you did one about our outage map. How is the map valuable and what other service offerings might be coming down the wire?   Joseph Muglia  14:37 Yeah, so first of all the outage map is is definitely an excellent tool. I think it keeps our our customers and our communities up to speed on what's going on when there is an outage. And so it's it's an extremely valuable tool for people to use to to make sure that you know they're they're being kept up to date. with what's happening with a particular outage going on in their area. In addition, now, you mentioned the battery programs. So this is something new that we started just in the past year, where if there's an extended planned outage that we're looking at it for a certain neighborhood, we're able to actually lend out some chargeable batteries. It's sort of a unit that has a number of different plugs that are involved in receptacles, and things where people can, for a period of time have some power available to them, you know, while their power is out, and while we're working on the equipment that supplies their home, so I think it's a great opportunity for folks to take advantage of that. We're still working some of the details behind it. But it's been it's been a great success. So far, we've had nothing but fantastic feedback on that program. So basically, if we know there's an outage in your area, we will offer you a battery. And people can keep their electronics and certain other things charged while their power is out. So I think that's, that's very innovative and very forward thinking. SMS. So we've got, we've got text to your phone right now, during a planned outage, we can let you know, through text messaging that there will be a plan power outage, you know, in your in your neighborhood. So that's also been working well. And we're also working toward, although we're not there yet, but more text messaging and notifications in the event of an unplanned outage as well. So I think that's probably something that people are dying to have. And I know there's a lot of work in the background, believe it or not to get it there. But we are working on that that's on our roadmap. And we're looking at having that available to our customers soon. So stay tuned for that.   Rebecca Schwartz  17:02 When an outage happens, can you tell us how and why people should report it and what happens after they do?   Joseph Muglia  17:10 So reporting an outage is extremely important, not just for the individual to let us know that we know there's a power outage. So like sometimes the power, if someone experiences a power outage, it could be their own equipment, it could be a broader issue, you know, on their street, or it could be their their whole subdivision, for instance, or the area. So it's important to let us know as soon as possible, I would say 80 or 90% of the time, we know when people are calling in that there's a power outage. But again, if it's a localized thing, and it's just their particular address, or just their street, it may take us a bit more time. before we're aware of that. So any call that comes in, we begin to build like a grid to so that we know like okay, we've got a call here we've got a call in that area. And it starts to build a bigger picture. And it helps us to determine what's going on. Right. So very important that people are calling in. It's important again, for the customer, it's important for their neighbors as well, right. And it's important for us, because it helps us get on the situation as quickly as possible. People can call through the website, hydroottawa.com they can go through Facebook, they can call our outage hotline at 613-738-0188. Certainly any of those avenues, the information will get to us and we can start processing and figuring out what the issue is so that we can look to restoration.   Dan Seguin  18:49 I'm going to knock on wood right now. But say a major summer storm hits the city, causing mass blackouts. How do you decide who gets restored first and why?   Joseph Muglia  19:02 So from an institutional perspective, like it's great to get the hospitals on the big government offices on as quickly as possible. After that, and I mean, the hospitals generally have generator backups. So that's been less of a concern than perhaps in the past. But I know there are some big grocery chains also that have battery have generation of backup generation. So that's awesome as well. But really, what we look at is trying to determine, you know, where we can get the biggest bang for our buck. So what what can we do from a system office perspective in conjunction with what's going on in the field to bring up as as many customers as possible, as long as it's being done safely. Right. So so we'll look to to see across the board, what makes the most sense to get As many customers as possible up, then from there, once we get the bigger pockets resolved and their backup, then we start working our way to the smaller and smaller areas. There are times when we have to actually increase the size of an outage in order to resolve it. That happens once in a while as well. And sometimes people will experience their power come back, and then they'll lose power for a period of time again, because we've had to isolate different areas in order to do a fix so that we can bring up the entire area. So that's, you know, that's often what happens. And I know people probably don't understand that. But I think it's an important point to bring up because sometimes you may experience another shorter outage after your power has been restored. And that's because we've had to do that in order to bring up the you know, the, the bigger section that might have been out.   Rebecca Schwartz  21:03 So Joseph, tell us what's been the biggest crisis or emergency that you've experienced in your role? And what did you learn from it?   Joseph Muglia  21:12 There's really been two in my career, I think, while it's been more than that, but two that stick out in my head. And that is, prior to having this role. I was in Alberta. And in 2013, we had flooding in Alberta, that was that blew my mind, to the point where the South Saskatchewan River was flowing through the city I was living in, and the water level was about a foot or two away from the banks of the bridge, that would have basically separate the city in two halves for a number of months. So that was that blew my mind. The second one was in 2018, the tornadoes here in Ottawa, which was I know, like we talked about it, probably less now, but that's still, you know, very, very much burned in my, in my mind, what we went through through those tornadoes. I may sound a bit cliche here, but I think that teamwork perspective, is probably the thing that I learned the most out of both of those issues, and not just teamwork for the folks on the ground that were actually doing the work that needed to be done the restoration. And I think, you know, largely about the restoration that went on here in the city during the tornadoes, but really like from from the perspective of our crisis communication team, our communication, you know, the basically the team that you folks are are involved with, that was hugely important to get the messaging out properly and clearly and efficiently. All of the management staff that went into the coordination and the logistics of getting materials to us of keeping you know, the the crews busy the fleet perspective of that restoration, just keeping the vehicles running, all while we had like power outages going on all over the place. We also had dips in our communication, like, we started to lose cell phones, I remember early on in the tornadoes as well. So for our IT department that posed challenges for them, but we were able to, through crisis, I think come together quickly. And and really focus on what needed to be focused on and leave sort of, you know, the the external stuff out of it. I think the most important thing is preparation ahead of time before something like that to hit again. And that's why I talked earlier about tabletop exercises and and mock disasters and going through like what the logistics look like because it's true, like as soon as you have a plan, the first casualty is the plan. Right? So if you don't know it, intuitively, you're gonna forget what the plan is. And then people scramble, right? They just naturally scramble. So the more and I know we were doing it in Alberta, too, is like the more of that training you can do up front to get people thinking about it and what's involved, the cleaner the restoration becomes. So that's probably been my biggest takeaway.   Dan Seguin  24:44 I've been learning that it takes a village to tackle major storms. Can you talk about the human side of your work? Who are the people and what are their roles in a crisis?   Joseph Muglia  24:56 There's so so many people like if I if I think about it, the frontlines, it's our 24/7 folks, it's our field operators that are the first response. Moving moving away from that, then we've got our on call, folks. So there are daily crews that go through a rotational process where if we're met with an incident during the night or on a weekend or something, there are crews that we have standing by so that they can assist with 24/7 and a bigger restoration. They are our biggest frontline defense, I think between, you know, acts of nature and keeping our folks connected. Right. So, but, and and those folks are extremely important. And, you know, God bless them, because they are there for us when we need them. And it doesn't matter the weather, it doesn't matter, you know what going on out there. They're, they're there, and they do it. But I think we also need to mention the folks that are in the office and are in our like directing stuff from the office, right. So there's our field supervisors and, and like our folks that are involved, again, with fleet, with procurement, with so many different things with finance, even our engineering and our tech folks, our GIS folks like all of them. So incredibly important when we're faced with an issue, because we need just about all of the, you know, the expertise and all of those different groups to help us sort out how we restore, particularly if we've got infrastructure that's on the ground. We need our design, folks, we need our engineering folks and our standards folks to help us, like figure out how we can best restore this in the quickest amount of time safely, so that our folks can experience you know, what they experience every day. And that's almost completely uninterrupted power, right. So, the entire team, I can't really chunk it down any more than that. And I can't say that any group is probably more important than the other because, like you said, it takes a village, right. And it really does during an incident,   Rebecca Schwartz  27:25 What new developments or innovations are exciting you about your job, or the industry in general right now?   Joseph Muglia  27:32 Early on, I mentioned my group, it can comprise of three different areas, the stations, the system operations and metering. But I didn't mention early on and I didn't get into it. The fourth piece of the fourth piece of my existence really is the automation. And so we're going through a really exciting time, as far as I'm concerned, in the electric industry, where we're we're looking at more automation in our system, building automation into the system so that we can restore power a lot faster, we can restore power remotely, rather than have, you know a crew being dispatched and going into the field. So a lot more automation within our system operations groups and groups so that more switches and more devices can be controlled within the system office rather than in the field. With automation, we can also reroute power automatically. So the system can sense a conductor or a piece of like a piece of a feeder that's out. And it can reroute power in a different area so that that restoration can happen instead of hours, it can happen in seconds. Now we're quite a ways away from that. But that's some of the stuff that we're we're moving toward. More devices in the field that will give us data that that we'll be able to use that data to make better investment choices, for instance, or, or better decisions for our customers, or having that data so that we can give that data to our customers and they can make the decisions that they want to make right. With a more automated grid, we can also introduce a lot more DERS or distributed electric resources. So more solar more wind, different ways of introducing electricity into the grid so that it helps us It helps us with reliability with with just you know volume of electricity in the future that's going to be required, right for EVs, like the introduction of EVs and the sustainment of more EV's in our system. An automated grid will help us do all of that and more right, including battery storage and things like that. So it really brings us to the next level. And the problem is that traditionally, an electric utility has been a bit more conservative like, we don't necessarily introduce a lot of technology early on, because we're needed as a very reliable source of energy. Right. And so we can't play around with too much technology until it's proven out. But we're getting to a point now where we see so much on the horizon that's available that the electric grid can can offer our customers and even other other LDCs other electric distributors, you know, there's so much that we can be doing with what we've got already. And with the introduction of a little bit more technology in the field. So I think that's by far in this industry, probably the most exciting.   Dan Seguin  30:57 Okay, now, how about we close off with some rapid fire questions?   Joseph Muglia  31:03 Okay   Dan Seguin  31:04 Joseph, what is your favorite word?   Joseph Muglia  31:08 My favorite word? I probably say, passion.   Dan Seguin  31:13 What is the one thing you can't live without?   Joseph Muglia  31:17 Probably my espresso machine.   Dan Seguin  31:20 Okay. What is something that challenges you?   Joseph Muglia  31:24 Probably the ongoing fight for my focus, right? So with like, an ever changing world there, there is like so much coming at us. And it seems like there's so many distractions to what you want to focus on. And I think that's, that's probably the biggest challenge for me is trying to stay focused on certain things when you're being bombarded.   Dan Seguin  31:47 Here's a good one. If you could have one superpower, what would it be?   Joseph Muglia  31:52 I would say, if I could look into the future by about 15 minutes or so that would be the power, right? That would be awesome.   Dan Seguin  32:01 Okay, you've got word of a massive thunderstorm approaching Ottawa in the next few minutes. What's the first thing you do?   Joseph Muglia  32:09 So the first call would be to our field supervisors to hold crews back to make sure that people are not leaving too early at the end of the day and out of the parking lot too quickly because we're probably going to need them. I would say that's probably my first phone call my first thing that I'm going to do.   Dan Seguin  32:29 And lastly, what do you currently find most interesting in your sector,   Joseph Muglia  32:35 most interesting in my sector, I would say the human element of it all, is probably the most, the most challenging and the most rewarding. And I saw that a lot, particularly through the pandemic and all of the changes that the pandemic brought. My team was, was largely, you know, they continued to work. They weren't put on any, any sort of rotation or anything. And, and so some of the challenges that that created was, I think it was it was very interesting that again, the human element of work is, I think, the most rewarding and the most challenging.   Dan Seguin  33:21 Well, Joseph, we've reached the end of another episode of The ThinkEnergy podcast. Again, thank you for joining us today. And Rebecca, I hope you had a lot of fun.   Rebecca Schwartz  33:32 I did. Thanks for having me.   Dan Seguin  33:33 Rebecca, and I will be co-hosting going forward in 2021. Thanks for joining us. And Rebecca, Do you really not know who Mulder and Scully are?   Rebecca Schwartz  33:44 Are they superheroes?   Dan Seguin  33:46 Oh god. See ya folks!

---Join us for our Summer Rewind series as we feature past podcast episodes!--- EPISODE #41: Does energy storage hold great potential for a Canada in which wind and solar power could dominate new power plant additions and gradually overtake other sources of electricity? How can energy storage make up for the current limitations of renewables? Find out if energy storage, particularly electricity storage, is the missing piece in the renewables jigsaw as Justin Rangooni, Executive director of Energy Storage Canada, shares his perspective. Related Content & Links: https://hydroottawa.com/ Websites: https://www.energystoragecanada.org  Twitter: @EnergystorageON LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/justin-rangooni-5063b542/   Transcript: Dan Seguin  00:42 Hey, everyone, welcome back. This is the ThinkEnergy podcast. If you're following energy trends around the world, you've likely heard about energy storage. It's a big topic, and there's a lot to unpack. While there are many types of systems to store energy, I think it's easiest to think of energy storage as the battery that you use to capture energy when it's produced, so you can use it at another time, perhaps when energy isn't available, like during a power outage. With renewable energy continuing to grow in Canada, where does energy storage fit? You have to wonder if energy storage will become the new power plants of the future. One thing is certain energy storage will play an important role in the future supply mix for electricity, most obviously, in creating a more flexible and reliable grid system. For example, when there is more supply than demand, such as during the night when energy costs are lower and power plants continue to operate, the surplus electricity generation can be sent to power energy storage systems, instead of being sold at a loss or going to waste. While wind and solar are great. They can only produce energy at a certain time. This reality has been a barrier for mass integration into modern electricity grids. Since the constant availability of reliable power is paramount to the country and our economy, a complimentary technology like energy storage could help fill the gap for managing today's renewables. Synergies between wind energy, solar energy and energy storage also mean that these technologies can provide a broader range of services to the grid when used in a coordinated manner that reduce overall electricity systems costs, such as building new and expensive generating plants. But at what scale are we at for energy storage today? And where is it headed in the near future? Is there a strategy and evidence that energy storage is a solution we're looking for? In short, where is Canada at on the energy storage journey to adoption? This leads me to today's big question: is energy storage the missing piece in the renewables jigsaw puzzle? And the solution for Canada's energy needs? Joining me today is a very special guest. Justin Rangooni, the executive director at energy storage Canada, who's here to help us unbox the energy storage mystery. Justin, welcome to the ThinkEnergy podcast. Justin, can you tell us a bit about yourself? What energy storage is and what your organization Energy Storage Canada does what it's all about? Justin Rangooni  04:04 Of course, Daniel, and thanks for having me on the chat. Always glad to chat with you and see our friends at Hydro Ottawa. Again, well, Energy Storage Canada is the National voice for energy storage. We are the only Association dedicated to advancing energy storage in the country. We have over 60 members from across the energy storage value chain from the biggest global companies to the most innovative startups. And we develop policy positions, advocate and educate decision makers and host educational and networking opportunities through webinars and our annual conference. We're basically energy storage 24 / 7, 365 days a year. Dan Seguin  04:43 Cool. Okay, at a high level, what are we talking about in terms of large scale or grid scale energy storage? What sizes are available? How long can the energy be stored for and is the goal to power cities for days or weeks? Justin Rangooni  05:02 Not a good question again, what makes energy storage so unique is the varying degrees of sizes, capabilities and technologies. In terms of larger grid scale, you know, we're talking about projects in the hundreds up to 1000 megawatts. But energy storage projects can be in the kilowatts as well, it all depends on the project and where it's located. And depending on the discharge rate of how much energy is injected back into the grid, it could be a couple hours or even more, again, all depends on the technology and the capabilities. And the goal for the sector is really to optimize generation, optimize distribution and transmission assets, provide the grid with reliable service and support the goal of affordability for all ratepayers. Dan Seguin  05:45 Okay, Tesla made a splash back in 2015, with its announcement of the power wall system, essentially small scale energy storage for homes, has there been any movement in this area? Justin Rangooni  06:00 So that is definitely the wave of the future as customers demand more choice and control of their energy needs. So small scale energy storage for homes will be getting there, especially as you see increased prevalence of electric vehicles and rooftop solar systems, residential storage systems, you know, as using the EV battery itself, and in hibernating with the source solar system would be in lockstep. What you're seeing a lot now in Ontario is behind the meter storage devices for large industrial customers, which are helping manage their consumption. So it's getting there. But right now, it's not quite but we are getting there into the small scale. Dan Seguin  06:41 Okay. Justin, can you explain what the clean energy goals are for the energy storage sector? What types of policies at the municipal provincial federal level need to be in place to succeed? Justin Rangooni  06:57 Sure, so our clean energy goals are to optimize cleaner sources of generation and to help with the energy transition are such talking really, a lot of other provinces are still relying on coal especially, and planning the transition away. So what we say is that we can optimize your existing cleaner assets, variable generation or otherwise, by having storage within the system. So you may you do not necessarily need to build new, dirtier forms of generation, you can use energy storage, to twin with your cleaner sources actually have. And in terms to do that, we're talking about removal of barriers, market opportunities, and just the general sense that energy storage resources are a mainstream tool for system operators to use. Dan Seguin  07:44 Moving on to the question, Justin, on how can Canada unlock the potential of the energy storage? Justin Rangooni  07:54 And that is the key question. And it was the focus of our annual conference recently. And in fact, it was the title of a valuation study we did for Ontario that we released this summer, which concluded that if the province had at least 1000 megawatts of energy storage enabled in the province, over the next decade, ratepayers would enjoy a net savings of over $2 billion. And to unlock that potential, again, it comes down to the removal of regulatory barriers, to fully enable energy storage, and its value offerings, and the creation of market opportunities. And again, for system operators to start to see things a little differently, see energy storage as a tool to be used. And that can be applied to the distribution side as well, that instead of traditional poles and wires, or traditional generation sources that you look at energy storage, which is a bit of a jack of all trades, or a Swiss Army knife to provide various service offerings for you. And so it's starting to see things a little differently with energy storage index. Dan Seguin  08:56 Now, the Canadian government recently announced a $10 billion infrastructure investment plan and specifically mentioned it would support both renewable and energy storage. What are your thoughts on the government plans? Justin Rangooni  09:16 So we were very supportive of that we're supportive of anything that comes from the federal government in terms of helping with the economics of energy storage projects or helping facilitate energy storage projects across the country. So with the announcement from the Canada's infrastructure bank, which is about a $2.5 billion funding initiative, we are very supportive and we look forward to working with the CIV on details. And we're looking forward to an upcoming federal budget which we hope will include even more funding opportunities, grants, and other types of programs for our energy storage going forward. Dan Seguin  09:51 Okay, what has been the impact of the pandemic on energy on the energy storage industry? Justin Rangooni  10:00 Well as with everything in every sector, it's the uncertainty that it has caused with what decisions can be made by the government decision makers that could have unintended consequences. For instance, in Ontario, their decision earlier this year to place a hiatus on the ICI program, the industrial conservation initiative, we have what it calls an unintended consequence of the decision because I put a lot of projects that were about to be built behind the meter on hold. So we understand what, you know, the challenges the government is facing to make decisions around the pandemic. We just hope that I think it's just it's stressed the importance of communication to understand how everybody could be affected by those decisions. So we are working with the government to ensure that no, we're here talk to us, we're here to help. Let's try to find a nice path forward to help with the economic recovery coming out of this pandemic, hopefully, in a not so distant future. Dan Seguin  10:57 Okay. Do you see the development and scaling of energy storage solution being imperative to successful transformation of the energy sector and the electricity grid? If so, how do you see energy storage accelerating in the years to come? Justin Rangooni  11:19 I think it's the latter question that is really key. Because we're seeing energy storage accelerating throughout the energy system across Canada. And we're talking about from residential use electric vehicles use as a battery to the continued use of behind the meter for large for large customers, more hybrid projects to better optimize current assets to transmission and distribution, deferral. So we're really looking at the entire gamut for energy storage is role to be played. And it really again depends on those market opportunities and removing barriers to really unlock energy storage's potential. Dan Seguin  11:52 Given the grid expertise of utilities, what role will they play in the energy storage field? Justin Rangooni  12:00 So we see that as the role being absolutely critical, as utility or utility members that we have ourselves we view they view energy storage as an essential tool as part of their system planning. And we believe all distributors and all utilities across the country will do as well. And we expect to see the only enhancement of energy storage resources as  a tool as an alternative to traditional poles and wires for utilities, which can better optimize utilities, investments in their poles and wires, and help with ratepayers affordability issues as well, by using storage, which is a cheaper alternative, in many cases to just building the status quo. Dan Seguin  12:40 Okay, Justin, it's now time to pull up your crystal ball with plans to further electrify public transportation and promote urban intensification, do you think that utilities are likely to account for a large share of battery energy storage in Canada? Justin Rangooni  12:58 So I'll get the crystal ball. I think the use of energy storage resources and the distribution level is inevitable. And that's a good thing. So I think we'll be seeing utilities utilizing energy storage resources in front and behind the meter in much greater share than they are doing now. I think with the removal of regulatory barriers, and just a more general sense that seeing energy storage as a tool for utilities to use, I think we're going to see a lot greater share. And that's a really good thing for the utilities, ratepayers and the system as a whole. Dan Seguin  13:32 Now, the next question is a mouthful, the economic value of energy storage is closely tied to other major trends impacting today's Power System, most notably the increasing penetration of wind and solar generation. How does battery storage help make better use of electricity system assets? Can it defer or even eliminate unnecessary investments in capital intensive assets, like building new and expensive generating plants to meet our country's forecasted energy needs? Justin Rangooni  14:08 So yeah, that was a mouthful. And I think the response is really short. I think, yes, it can. And it's one of the major value propositions of energy storage. Depending on the business case, and again, the technology you're using beyond just batteries, because energy storage could be compressed air facilities could be flywheels, pumped storage, and thermal storage. There are many different technologies available. And depending on the business case being used, you could see it as a deferment, or in place of building traditional generation, or, the deferment of just building traditional poles and wires, for instance, it all depends on the business case, but again, because it's a tool, that's what we're trying to say is have that as a tool so you can see if it is the better alternative. Dan Seguin  14:56 Now, are you ready to close us off with some rest rapid fire questions. Justin Rangooni  15:01 Of course! Those are my favorite. Dan Seguin  15:04 Okay, well, what is your favorite word? Justin Rangooni  15:08 Cookies Dan Seguin  15:10 Okay, what is the one thing you can't live without? Justin Rangooni  15:15 Cookies? Dan Seguin  15:18 Okay, what habit or hobby? Have you picked up during shelter-in-place? Justin Rangooni  15:25 Well, it would be cutting my own hair and cutting my son's hair. Okay, I thought you were going to say baking cookies. Oh, baking cookies. There you go. Okay. Dan Seguin  15:36 If you could have one superpower, what would it be? Justin Rangooni  15:40 Oh, I would say flying, we can skip the airport lines. That would be the best. Dan Seguin  15:45 If you could turn back time and talk to your 18 year old self. What would you tell him? Justin Rangooni  15:52 Well, I would say get your sleep in now. Because with three kids that is definitely in short supply. Dan Seguin  16:00 Good, good one. And lastly, what do you currently find most interesting in your sector? Justin Rangooni  16:08 Well, I think the most interesting thing is the endless opportunities for innovation and creativity. Energy Storage being a tool that can be used by utilities like customers by the system operators. The possibilities are endless with energy storage. That's what makes the sector so exciting. Dan Seguin  16:28 Well, Justin, we've reached the end of another episode, I think energy podcasts. Last question for you. How can our listeners learn more about you and energy storage Canada? How can they connect? Justin Rangooni  16:43 That is the best question of the day. They can look at our website at energystoragecanada.org all the information is there of who we are what we do. Joining up for memberships Of course, you can see our all our publications and our submissions. All the and there's a lot of great information up there. So check out energystoragecanada.org. Dan Seguin  17:05 Cool. Again, thank you for joining me today. I hope you had a lot of fun. Justin Rangooni  17:09 Sure did, Daniel. Thanks so much for the opportunity. Dan Seguin  17:14 Thank you for joining us today. I truly hope you enjoyed this episode of The ThinkEnergy podcast. For past episodes, make sure you visit our website hydroottawa.com/podcast. Lastly, if you found value in this podcast, be sure to subscribe. Anyway, this podcast is a wrap. Cheers, everyone.

---Join us for our Summer Rewind series as we feature past podcast episodes!--- EPISODE #38: Waterpower is Canada's most abundant source of clean and renewable electricity. In fact, because of this, Canada is the second largest generator of hydroelectricity in the world. So, what's next for Canada's waterpower industry? Is there untapped potential? What are the plans for growth nationally and what influence does it have on the world stage? Our special guest, Anne-Raphaëlle Audouin, President and CEO of WaterPower Canada, helps us demystify the water industry. Related Content & Links: https://hydroottawa.com/ Websites: waterpowercanada.ca Twitter: @WaterPowerCA LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/canadian-hydropower-association/   Transcript: Dan Seguin  00:02 Hey, everyone, welcome back. This is the ThinkEnergy podcast, one of Canada's oldest hydroelectric generating station was commissioned right here in the nation's capital in 1891. Located in the heart of downtown Ottawa, is a stone throws away from the parliament building. Chaudière Falls is still providing clean and renewable electricity today, nearly 130 years after it went into service. While hydroelectricity first powered our great country, it was fossil fuel that became the dominant energy source of the 20th century. But it seems that what was old is new again. And cleaner electricity is making a comeback in a big way. I'm convinced it will be the energy source that powers the 21st century. Because Canada is a water rich country, it's not surprising that water power is Canada's most abundant source of clean, and renewable electricity. It provides more than 60% of our country's total electricity, with an installed capacity soon exceeding 85,000 megawatts. As such, Canada is the second largest generator of hydroelectricity in the world after China. To reduce Canada's emissions of greenhouse gases that cause climate change, we must strategically reduce our reliance on fossil fuels and increase the amount of electricity we produce from non-emitting and renewable energy resources. Hydroelectricity produces no air pollution, and has ultra-low greenhouse gas emissions, especially for those stations that are run of the river. From a full lifecycle assessment basis, Canada's hydro power is amongst the lowest emitting resources available and like Chaudière falls proves hydro power assets can last well over 100 years if properly maintained, making them very cost effective long term investments. Canada is already a leader in hydro power generation, but it has a potential to more than double its current capacity, thanks to its abundant, untapped water power resource. Contrary to popular opinion, Canadian hydro power is cost competitive, which helps keep rates low for customers. In fact, provinces with the highest hydro power installed capacity tend to have the lowest electricity costs. So here's today's big question: What's next for Canada's water power industry? What are the plans for growth nationally? And what influence does it have on the world stage? Our special guest today will help demystify the water industry: Waterpower Canada's president and CEO, Anne-Raphaëlle Audouin. Perhaps you can start by telling us a bit about yourself, what drew you to your current role, and how you became an advocate for renewable energy, particularly waterpower. Anne-Raphaëlle Audouin  04:04 I think what really brought me to waterpower is a mixed bag of training and experiences. I specialized in environmental law at school. So my passion has always been sustainability and environmental protection. And after graduating, I had the opportunity to work for justice for a bit mostly focusing on mining projects. But that kind of took me to the next you know, job which was to work for Hatch, an international engineering firm, where I worked on international project projects across the world as an environmental and social impact management specialist. So that's where I got my hands dirty in terms of really seeing how projects are done from start to finish the whole pre-feasibility to commissioning. So that was very, very good, a great experience over about four years. And then I kind of switched a little bit - wanting to have a broader approach to sustainability. So not just look at projects, but also look at corporate sustainability. How do you integrate that thinking into your processes, the way you work with your employees? And also how do you continue to obviously implement the best procedures on projects. And so I looked at other opportunities. And I was then hired by what was then called the Canadian Hydropower Association, which we rebranded about two years ago as Waterpower Canada. So that was my first real exposure to the water power industry. Now, about seven years ago, I'd say, which, you know, time flies, as they say, but it's been a great experience, because it really allowed me to bring my legal experience and my passion for sustainability in my role as an advocate for renewable energy. Dan Seguin  06:01 What is the mission of Waterpower Canada? And what kind of initiatives is it pursuing to advance and support hydro power, nationally, and even internationally, Anne-Raphaëlle Audouin  06:13 So we are a national trade association. So our mission as an organization is really to promote and actively advocate for hydropower. That means, you know, promoting the existing assets, the existing fleet, promoting the attributes, what it does for Canadians what it does for the country in general, and also promoting future developments, be it sometimes reinvestment in the fleet through refurbishment redevelopments, or, of course, as well, Greenfield, Greenfield projects. So nationally that's really our focus is to bring awareness, I always say my job is 50%, government relations, 50% communications, and they tend to marry in the sense that you're always communicating in this field, right, you're always trying to bring more knowledge and more awareness about your sector, no matter who you're talking to. But you aim it a different way, depending on kind of where you focus, what you focus on. And then internationally, we definitely focus more and more on, on working with the US in terms of leveraging the clean exports of hydro power to the US. It's not a new thing. You know, it's been ongoing for decades. And it's been a huge source of wealth for Canada and for certain provinces in particular. But it is something that we see as an opportunity in the future because the US has a pretty emission intensive electricity sector. And they're looking at decarbonizing similar to us, right, but they don't have necessarily all the attributes ready to go that that we can offer in Canada, and we are very connected north-south. So it is it is almost a self-fulfilling prophecy in the sense of being able to send us clean electrons across the border, without too many too many hurdles. So we were also kind of deploying that kind of efforts internationally. Dan Seguin  08:15 In Canada, we know about the environmental benefits of hydro power, in terms of renewable energy, cleaner air, and less pollution, overall, perhaps less known lies under the surface, and the impact of these facilities, particularly turbines can have on fish and other water species. Can you talk a bit about what the industry is doing to contribute to the recovery of endangered, threatened and other species at risk? Anne-Raphaëlle Audouin  08:47 The first thing I'll say is that our sector has been around for more than a century. So any impact that we have is very well understood, and has been very well studied. And there's been a lot of research going into avoidance or when you cannot avoid an impact, mitigation, right, which is the rule for sure. So in terms of fish habitats, in particular, I'll give you an example which is something I've learned through my career working within the water power sector. And it's quite interesting and it happens across the nation right from coast to coast to coast, but you have requirements that are set by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and also of course, by your local regulating bodies, that you know, operate at different levels. And those you know, dictate kind of the measures that you have to put in place and in many cases when you have a hydro site, runoff river or reservoir, you tend to have offsets and you know protocols or fish habitat banking is what we call and without getting into the you know the terminology of you know, that we use with an industry, but through those techniques, you actually have a great opportunity to operate a site that now has a greater fish population that what you found when you actually started with your Greenfield project, and that has been seen and studied. And there's been a lot of, you know, case studies presented on this, where, you know, different fish species actually respond very well to habitat banking. And, they're thriving, more than, you know, maybe the conditions that they were having before the hydro site was developed. So it's that that's just an example. And of course, it's a great success story, but it's not to overshadow the fact that, yes, we operate in water, we do have impacts, and there's always, and they will always be room for improvements. And so a lot of research above and beyond this protocols and, and systems that we implement. A lot of research is actually invested in making sure that the first rule is to avoid impacts, and you don't turn to mitigation right away. Dan Seguin  11:10 When you envision the future of hydro power, what do you see? And what are some of the most exciting things that the industry is doing? Or that Waterpower Canada is spearheading? Anne-Raphaëlle Audouin  11:23 So, you know, with COVID-19, of course, the landscape is different now. But I'm going to put that aside, and for the only reason that we don't know what's going to happen, right, we don't know what's going to happen post COVID the ramifications how long it's going to last. So kind of crystal balling the future on this is a bit of a risky exercise. But if I if I said that crisis aside, what was really exciting, just you know, over the past few years, and what we were lining up and gearing up to, to work on was the huge wave of refurbishment and redevelopment. The average age of a hydropower facility in Canada is 50 years. And that's about the same in the US, right? Our assets are what we call generational assets. Which is great, because you can refurbish them, you know, throughout generations, and it's yours to keep for decades and decades and decades. But what it also means is that every once in a while you have to invest, and inject those capital reinvestments so that you can continue to operate your fleet. And also, you know, modernize the fleet. So that's very exciting. Because no matter what happens with the global pandemic situation,  this is going to happen, I don't know if it's going to happen within the next year, or now within the next five years. But what it means is that it's going to inject billions in the Canadian economy, it's going to sustain a lot of jobs. And it's going to help us decarbonize, you know, further, we already have about an 80%, non-emitting electricity grid, thanks to Hydro and other renewables, and thanks to nuclear, but of course, there's more room for improvement. And so anything you can do to leverage your existing fleet and just pull out those clean electrons  is good news in a very exciting. Dan Seguin  13:15 What do you think is the biggest myth or misunderstanding about water power? Anne-Raphaëlle Audouin  13:20 You know, I, there are quite a few. So but it raises my blood pressure when I think about all of them, so I'll just focus on one. But what I what I hear often and above and beyond the lack of knowledge, generally speaking, I think it's always mind boggling to hear that people don't necessarily know or understand the role that waterpark plays in our in our generation mix. But above and beyond that, I think that the biggest misunderstanding is the fact that people really assume that hydro is an old, dusty, non-innovative technology, because we've been around for so long. And it is actually really, really incorrect because we've been around for so long because we are extremely innovative because we are extremely fine tuning research. Every corner that we take, right, and if we weren't innovative, and if we weren't investing in digitalization and new systems, we wouldn't have survived. And so I always say that the original clean tech in Canada is water power, and is the most enduring one, which is a pretty impressive fact. Dan Seguin  14:33 The hydro power sector contributes more than $30 billion to the Canadian economy and supports a labor force 130,000 strong. What kind of growth does waterpower Canada foresee in the future? Anne-Raphaëlle Audouin  14:47 So just through the refurbishments and redevelopments that was talking about earlier. This is going to trigger a huge growth in the fleet because with no major new and harmful impacts with, you know, a pretty reasonable injection of funds into your fleet, you can actually get a lot more generation out of an existing site. So that's very exciting. And, it's going to trickle down in terms of economic ramifications. But what we will always kind of try and advocate for is to not let go of Greenfield hydro. And, and the exciting thing about hydro is it comes in many shapes and forms. So you don't have to just focus on large hydro reservoir, you also have run of the river of all sizes , by the way, because a lot of people assume that run off river is small hydro, but you can have 1000 megawatt, run of the river facilities, right, which is pretty big. But what's really exciting too, and we hear about more and more these days is pump storage. So we, you know, we didn't focus too much on pump storage, I think as a nation in the past, because we didn't really have to, we had so many easily developable sites run of the river, reservoir and reservoir is embedded storage, right. So it's a  great way to have on demand clean electricity. But now more and more, we're looking at exciting projects that are investing in pumped storage, and  its across Canada, as well, there's a project in Ontario, another one in Alberta, but pump storage is basically a closed loop hydro system where you have elevation, and you take advantage of that elevation to bring water down, and then back up depending on cost of electricity and low demand. So that you can meet peak load requirements, and also reduce your expenditure by managing that curve, in a very smart way. So it is it is very innovative. It is it is something that again has existed for many, many years. It's nothing new. But we had we haven't really invested a lot in this technology in Canada. So far, it's much more common in the US. But I see this coming more and more top of mind. Dan Seguin  17:19 Hydro power infrastructure is designed to withstand floods, and often plays an important role in flood mitigation and management. We've learned that in Ottawa the hard way in 2017, and 2019. Has climate resilience and adapting to the impacts of climate change been front of mind, for Canada's electricity producers? Where do you see making the biggest impacts? Anne-Raphaëlle Audouin  17:46 So yeah, we are investing a lot in climate change research. And I'd say it should be a priority for any sector, probably in the world. So there's a lot of research going on, we are partnering with modeling agencies, like , who helped us, you know, understand, not just the impacts on the hydropower fleet, but kind of bring in external factors as well that are going to affect climate change. The difficulty and the challenge in the country that's as big as Canada is the fact that your impacts are not going to be one general, one size fits all for the sector. So you won't be able to use general categorization for your industry, you're going to have to get regions, of course. And I remember actually a few years ago, during the floods that were happening in Ontario and Quebec, my members in BC, were saying that they were actually observing low levels in their reservoirs. And so that just speaks to the fact that it's not just a small difference, you have an extreme event happening in one side of the country, and another extreme event as a drought on the other side of the country. So what that means is you have to be extremely flexible. And people have to design especially when they refurbish and when they build new sites with climate change in mind every step of the way. Dan Seguin  19:08 You've touched on this earlier Anne-Raphaëlle, hydro power has been around for more than 100 years. What does the untapped potential in Canada look like? And what are some of the innovations within the sector that makes it even more attractive? Anne-Raphaëlle Audouin  19:27 Yeah. So that's one of the other misconceptions that I was alluding to earlier on a previous question. When that when I talk to Canadians and also to policymakers, sometimes they tell me Well, you know, yes, we've got a lot of hydro power in Canada, it's more than 60% of our generation. But surely, because it's so big, we must be tapped out. There must not be any more hydro to develop. And it couldn't be further from the truth. We actually have a lot of water In Canada, we've got good innovation, great sights still to develop. So our untapped potential is actually more than double our existing installed capacity. So we've got about 85,000 megawatts of current installed capacity. So you can, you can only imagine what we could do if we were to just develop a portion of the untapped technical potential. And, and the great news about that now, I always emphasize that when I when I speak at conferences, or  when I have discussions with government, and stakeholders in general is to say that, that potential is not just a reality in in one province, it's a reality across the country. So when we look at decarbonizing, electrifying, all of those great things that you know are happening are going to happen, you know, over the next few years, it's just a must to look at what you could do with your hydro resources in your province or in your territory, because it's there, it exists. Dan Seguin  21:01 Technology is enhancing digitization, and automation of hydro power plants to realize their full potential. What are some of the digital solutions around monitoring, maintenance, and service that you see the industry benefiting from either now or the near future? Anne-Raphaëlle Audouin  21:22 So  I hear a lot about virtual reality, and also artificial intelligence in my sector. And of course, they're two different things, but they tap into that new world of technologies that can help you operate your site in a different way. I think anything that's going to allow us to have remote access to our sites, and that means from a controlling operation. Also, from a supply chain perspective - actually COVID-19 brought one positive from my perspective, which is the fact that we're leveraging tools, more and more that allow us to do remote inspection, for example, because of course, during the pandemic, we couldn't actually go to two warehouses and inspect equipment as it was coming in from China, wherever across the world, right? You had to just wait until it arrived on site. And sometimes we're talking big pieces of furniture, now just a screw and a hammer. So just having tools that really allow you to get in and take a full scope, engineering, look at your equipment, as it comes in before it is delivered is a huge progress, and those tools exists. And that was a huge discovery, I think for me, because I wasn't aware that technology was that far ahead, already ready to respond. Another example, which is always interesting, because I've toured quite a few hydro sites. And I remember at one of the oldest sites in Canada, you know, we were looking at the control room: tons of switches, you know, probably a room that could probably accommodate eight to 10 people at one time. And, and the operator was saying, well, we refurbished and now the person can actually control everything from his living room at home, and is that his laptop, because it's all integrated, and the system is talking to that control room here on site. And that's all it takes. So automation is definitely going to be needed in the future. But it doesn't mean that we won't need, you know, physical, you know, staff and people to manage, because, of course, it's still going to be a huge requirement, but it is more efficient. And that is every day that that kind of innovation happens. Dan Seguin  23:44 You indicated earlier that waterpower in Canada provides more than 90% of our renewable power and 60% of our overall electricity supply. Canada is blessed with an abundance of untapped potential, residing both in existing sites and new developments. Any thoughts on the pros and cons of refurbishment and redevelopment opportunities versus the development of new projects? Anne-Raphaëlle Audouin  24:15 Yes. So I mean, it's all case specific: that's the obvious answer. And so what makes sense for a site may not make sense for another one, meaning that, you know, we've got a lot of members that are actually assessing a specific site and considering everything like from decommissioning, which is, you know, turning off the lights basically and saying, Okay, this asset has played its role and that we're going to return the site back to nature. When the economy, you know, just circumstances or environmental or just the general circumstances surrounding a specific site dictate certain decisions. So I think it's not very common that, you know, people would decide to decommission a hydro site because most of the time, even if it's just a little bit of generation, when you've had a site for 80-90 years, and you've refurbished it and maintained it over the years, it's still it's still a great provider of clean electricity. It's still a money-maker for the utility or for the independent power producer. So it's still definitely a great benefit to have within your fleet. But so I don't see any downside to refurbishment, or redevelopment. I think it's a low hanging fruit for electrification, it's something that's going to happen. It's just a question of when, and Greenfield hydro is not going anywhere. I think it's just, let's focus on what we can do first, which is refurbishment. It's the obvious thing to do and it's needed. And in a decade or two, we'll probably see another wave of investment in Greenfield hydro. Dan Seguin  25:55 Before I forget, are you able to demystify for our listeners what Greenfield hydro is? Anne-Raphaëlle Audouin  26:03 Greenfield hydro means you take a site that is completely natural. So an untouched site, and you develop a hydro site. And it's a terminology that can be used for any industry, not just hydro. So you can say Greenfield mining Greenfield wind, it just means that you start with a site that hasn't been touched. Dan Seguin  26:24 Hydro power can provide abundant low carbon energy, with its storage from reservoir and pump storage. As the only renewable form of baseload electricity, how essential is hydro power to leading Canada's transition away from fossil fuels, while maximizing environmental benefits. Anne-Raphaëlle Audouin  26:46 It's not only essential, it's critical. We always say that if we didn't have what a power within our generation mix, we would be in in a terrible situation as a country, because again, 60% of our overall electricity generation is coming from that big renewable giant, which is water power. So you know, if we take a step back and consider for one second the world we live in, in Canada, without water power, it would be quite different, and it would probably be much dirtier in terms of emissions. So we start with a huge asset, and a huge advantage compared to some countries and you know, people from across the world come to Canada to actually learn about our mostly non-emitting electricity grid. How did you do it? What are the systems you put in place? What is your regulatory environment? How did you get to where you are now? But of course, it's not to say that we are perfect because we're not we've got high emission, or emission intensive sectors. Some provinces are doing better than others for historical reasons, you know, different decisions. And I think we've been blessed with an abundance of natural resources across the nation. And so we shouldn't point fingers. It's really not about that. It's just about Okay, how do we get better? How do we clean up our system? So that we move away from, you know, negative emissions and move toward electrification, which is the priority? Right, the easiest thing to do is to turn to electrifying our transportation, of course, and then buildings, and hydropower is there, you know, we just need the right, you know, economic environment, the right signals from governments, in terms of regulatory streamlining, for example, in terms of regulations that incentivize investment in hydro, and the sector will respond because we've got the resources to develop and do more to decarbonize Canada. Dan Seguin  28:46 You've touched on this earlier, but wondering if we can explore further. Both Canada and the United States are looking for ways to reduce carbon emissions to meet greenhouse gas reduction targets. With 60% of US electricity still being generated from coal and gas powered thermal plants, is Canada's clean, renewable hydro power becoming an attractive option for Border States? How are those partnerships negotiated? Has it been an easy sell? Are those states coming to you? Anne-Raphaëlle Audouin  29:22 So it's as we discussed, yes, it's been something that has been done for years. So it's nothing new under the sun. But I think it's becoming more top of mind because big players like the mayor of New York, you know, for the past year has been saying, you know, we want to import a lot of clean and renewable hydro from Quebec. And he's right you know, it's a few hours north of his of his state. It's available there. There are big surpluses in Quebec it's the cheapest electricity you can buy not just in Canada - in North America. And it's a source of wealth for this province. And it's the same story in Manitoba. You know, who sends electricity to Minnesota and other states and neighboring that border on that side of the country, with new transmission lines going through the approval process in each of those jurisdictions. So I think this is definitely going to be more talked about in the future. I think it's probably rising to news headlines more and more because of politics. And depending on the political environment on either side of the border, it can be framed as a positive story, or it can be framed as a negative story, but for all intents and purposes for Canadians and for Americans, it is a great, great thing to do, because you decarbonize the system, you have a low electricity cost, and on top of everything, it's clean and renewable, so why wouldn't you do it? Dan Seguin  30:51 How about we close off with rapid fire questions? Are you ready? Anne-Raphaëlle Audouin  30:55 Okay. Dan Seguin  30:57 What is your favorite word? Anne-Raphaëlle Audouin  31:01 Um,you know, I'm a Francophone. But there's a word that I really like in English, not necessarily for its meaning, but for the sound it has on the tongue. It's serendipity. I just find it funny. It rolls well. Dan Seguin  31:14 What is the one thing you can't live without? Anne-Raphaëlle Audouin  31:17 Probably in equal measures: my family and coffee. Is that an acceptable answer? Dan Seguin  31:24 What is something that challenges you? Anne-Raphaëlle Audouin  31:29 As a mom, with a young family, I'm not a big fan of the terminology, you know, work life balance, but just trying to set some time for what's important, and not being consumed by work or other things. So just knowing your limits, I think is going to be a lifelong exercise for me. Dan Seguin  31:51 If you could have one superpower, what would it be? Anne-Raphaëlle Audouin  31:55 Oh, that's a good one. Probably traveling through time. Dan Seguin  32:00 Okay. If you could turn back time, and talk to your 18 year old self? What would you tell her? Anne-Raphaëlle Audouin  32:08 That you're on the right path, you know, continue to travel as much as you can. And, and learn from people who want to mentor you, you know, on your path  to whatever you want to achieve. Because you know, people want to help each other. That's what I've learned. They're always happy to share insights. And most the time you just have  to ask and people will be there to help you. Dan Seguin  32:33 And lastly, what do you currently find most interesting in your sector? Anne-Raphaëlle Audouin  32:40 I think all the excitement around the electrification, the fact that we know this is probably the next Industrial Revolution. It's hard to really tangibly feel what this is going to look like. But it's going to affect everybody in a good way. And there's not going to be one sector that's going to be left to the side because we're all going to need to collaborate. And so just that aspect of working together and being able to find new ways to revolutionize a system that has been implemented for years and years is very exciting. Dan Seguin  33:13 Last question for you. How can our listeners learn more about your organization? How can they connect? Anne-Raphaëlle Audouin  33:20 So website is always the first stop: waterpowercanada.ca We're very active on social media too, so they can find us on YouTube. They can find us on Twitter and on LinkedIn. And don't be a stranger because we love hearing from people. Dan Seguin  33:39 Thank you for joining us today. I truly hope you enjoyed this episode of The ThinkEnergy podcast. For past episodes, make sure you visit our website hydroottawa.com/podcast. Lastly, if you found value in this podcast, be sure to subscribe. Cheers, everyone.

---Join us for our Summer Rewind series as we feature past podcast episodes!--- EPISODE #37: Roughly 50 per cent of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in Canada are from municipalities. This means that cities have the opportunity to make a huge impact when it comes to shifting and improving energy habits. In this episode, Andrea Flowers – the Senior Project Manager for Environmental Programs, Planning, Infrastructure & Economic Development for the City of Ottawa – tells us all about the steps that Ottawa is taking, through an action plan called Energy Evolution, to reduce GHG emissions from the community by 100 per cent by 2050 and from City operations by 100 per cent by 2040. Related Content & Links: Websites: Visit ottawa.ca/climatechange to learn more about what Ottawa is doing to reduce GHG emissions and to build a more resilient city in the face of climate change.  Visit ottawa.ca/energyevolution or the Energy Evolution page on Engage Ottawa to learn more about Energy Evolution. Complete a survey to help Energy Ottawa understand the barriers you face to acting on climate change and subscribe to Engage Ottawa to be notified when new content is added.  https://hydroottawa.com/   Transcript: Dan Seguin  00:41 Well, everyone, welcome back. This is another episode of The ThinkEnergy podcast. In April 2019, the City of Ottawa, the nation's capital, declared a climate emergency. It was this declaration that signaled to the community at large that the municipal government was taking climate action very, very seriously. And that is why ramping up with its climate change master plan, its climate resiliency strategy, and a special project called Energy Evolution. It's clear the city recognize that municipalities can influence significant change over their own emissions. In fact, roughly 50% of greenhouse gas emissions in Canada are from municipalities. That means every town and every city in Canada can make a huge impact. By tackling climate change at the municipal level, on the ground sort of speak, municipalities can not only improve the quality of life for their residents, but also reduce greenhouse gas emissions and save money in operations and energy costs. Today, we're going to focus on Energy Evolution. This is the action plan for how the City of Ottawa will meet 100% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from its operations of the municipal government by 2040, and from the community, the entire city by 2015. In short, its vision is clear to transform Ottawa into a thriving city of the future powered by clean, renewable energy. Realizing Energy Evolution's vision will require concerted efforts and collaboration across all sectors of the community like never before. The strategy is guided by three components: reduce energy use through conservation and efficiency, increase the supply renewable energy through local and regional production, and prioritize the procurement of clean and renewable energy. Here is today's big question. How will Ottawa the nation's Capital go about to set its emission reduction targets. And what was the process to creating a climate action plan? Joining me today is a very special guest, Andrea Flowers, who is leading the development of the city of Ottawa's renewable energy strategy. Andrea, can you tell us a bit about you, the work that you do, and why global warming, climate change and clean energy means so much to you? Andrea Flowers  03:37 Well, I have more than 15 years strategic climate change planning, policy development, project management, stakeholder engagement and public education. I've worked in the nonprofit private and public sector at the municipal, provincial and federal level. And over the last year and a half or so I've had the privilege of leading the City of Ottawa's as climate change and resiliency team. I think that climate change is the political and moral challenge of our time, and I think we all have a responsibility to learn about it and take action on it. Dan Seguin  04:07 Can you tell us a bit about why Ottawa declared a climate emergency in 2019 and why the city needs a community energy transition strategy, like energy evolution? Andrea Flowers  04:20 Ottawa declared a climate emergency to name, frame and deepen our commitment to protecting the economy or ecosystem in our community from climate change. Worldwide, climate scientists agree that fast rising global temperatures have created a climate emergency, and that we need to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius in order to avoid catastrophic climate change. At this point, there's hardly a week that goes by without hearing about climate change in the news. And so, cities across the country and around the world have declared climate change in order to take action on this issue and raise the profile of it. Since cities have an influence over about half the emissions in Canada, I think Ottawa like all other cities needs a strategy like energy evolution to respond to climate change. I also think that cities like all other levels of government have a responsibility to play in the leadership role of catalyzing the broader community, and helping us all collectively rise to the challenge. In Ottawa Energy Evolution is our strategy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the community 100% by 2050. In line with that global science and energy evolution hopes to transform Ottawa into a thriving city powered by clean renewable energy. But realizing Energy Evolution's vision will require concerted efforts and collaboration across all sectors of the community. Dan Seguin  05:48 Andrea, wondering if you can expand on the scope and scale of changes required for Ottawa to reduce GHG emissions below the 2020 levels by 2050. And what are the short, mid and long term targets? Andrea Flowers  06:07 I'll start with the second part of the question for context. So as part of Council's approval of the new climate change master plan in Ottawa, short, mid and long term targets for greenhouse gas emissions were set, and they align with those inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change targets. So the IPCC targets to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. So community wide, the short term target is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 43% by 2025 and 68% by 2040 and 100% by 2050. And then the scope scale and the short timelines associated with those are really difficult to meet. I would say that meeting those targets will require both unprecedented action and Investment across the community and around the world. So to give you a sense of what that scope and scale means, we're going to have to phase out almost all fossil fuels. That means gas, natural gas and diesel, we're going to nearly fully electrify our heating and cooling systems are going to have to nearly fully electrify or go to zero emission transportation systems. For our personal vehicles or commercial fleets and our transit systems, we're going to have to start using more waste heat and renewable natural gas to meet our heating demands. And we're going to have to generate and store enough renewable energy, particularly electricity mostly from wind and solar to meet the demand and offset emissions that we currently have from Ontario's provincial grid. Dan Seguin  07:51 based on your analysis, what are the biggest contributors to Ottawa's greenhouse gas emissions and how challenging will it be to shift away from those, Andrea Flowers  08:03 let me be a bit of background. So Ottawa undertakes greenhouse gas emissions inventories every year so that we know where our emissions come from. And in 2018, the most recent year that we have right now, roughly 90% of the emissions in Ottawa came from the building and transportation sectors, basically how we heat and cool our homes and how we get around the city. And if we look at those emissions, and the contributing sources of emissions, then natural gas is by far the largest contributor in the community, followed by gasoline and diesel. Of course, given the scope and scale of the transportation system in our building sector, it's going to be really difficult to shift away from these emission sources. governments don't have control direct control over emissions, although of course they can influence them between policy and regulation or incentives and disincentives, but success is going to depend to a large extent on private action. It's going to take billions of dollars of public and private capital to make community wide investments over the next 30 years. And to meet those targets that we set, the upfront investments over the next 10 years will be the highest. But the good news is that our financial analysis shows there'll be a net financial benefit to society at large starting in early 2030, probably around 2032 when the net annual savings start to outpace the revenues generated and the savings generated compared to the annual investments required. And beyond the financial challenges. There's lots of federal and provincial governmental, regulatory barriers that prevent us from doing some of the actions required in the model. And then even beyond this, of course, there's risk that the public won't make or accept the types of changes required. And I'm cognizant of the fact that there's a huge Equity and Inclusion risk for this transition. We need to find ways that everybody can participate in climate solutions, and not just the people who can afford it. Dan Seguin  10:14 In your view, do you feel that public acceptance is a challenge? Can anyone participate in climate solutions? Are there any barriers? Andrea Flowers  10:23 I'm a champion in this sector. I also own an EV. And I cycle almost everywhere. I've done deep retrofits on my home, and they're all really challenging choices to make for all kinds of reasons: where to start, how to prioritize how to actually do it. You're highlighting some of the other challenges in public acceptance and just our ability to make these changes. Dan Seguin  10:50 The intergovernmental panel on climate change has said that limiting global warming to 1.5 Celsius is possible. But will require far reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society. In order to achieve this at the local level, what type of changes can we expect from the city and even from ourselves Andrea Flowers  11:14 Well, when we look at Energy Evolution, we've broken it down in a total of five sectors on to figure out how we can achieve a 100% reduction by 2050. The five sectors are land use buildings, transportation, waste, and renewable natural gas and electricity. And four out of the five sectors really rely on land use as sort of a base element to the whole model. If we look at the model itself, the building and transportation sectors account for roughly 75% of all the cumulative emission reductions from now until 2050. And the remaining 25% will have to come from waste and renewable natural gas and electricity sectors. The model itself then takes those five sectors and it breaks it down into 39 actions. And those 39 actions tell us sort of the scale of change required in each of the actions. If we think about what the top five emissions are, I said 75% of the reductions will come from the buildings and transportation sector. So it's no surprise that four of these five come from those areas includes by far the largest action, which is to electrify personal electric vehicles. So about 20% of the 100% of emissions that we need to achieve will come from the electrification of personal vehicles. The second most important action is to divert organics and create renewable natural gas so we need to divert our our kitchen waste our yard and leaf waste away from landfills where we create very a powerful GHG emission called methane. And we need to divert both methane that's produced out landfills and methane, which we could capture through anaerobic digesters and create renewable natural gas. So luckily the city is right now doing a new solid waste master plan. And there they are seeking input on what to do with our organics. The third most important action is to retrofit existing residential buildings and the fourth is to retrofit existing commercial buildings. Now, we're not talking about just air sealing and new windows or insulation in the attic. We're talking about deep retrofits, we're talking about retrofits which will reduce natural gas consumption by about 60%, or at least our thermal or heating demand by about 60%. And we're talking about reducing our electrical demand by about 50%. So deep deep retrofits throughout the residential and commercial and institutional sectors, and then the fifth, like the top five action is to transition to zero emission commercial fleets. And, again, this will likely be electrification of commercial fleets. But we haven't ruled out fuel cells either. Dan Seguin  14:23 Ottawa has defined its greenhouse gas emission targets and states that one of the ways it will meet them is by increasing the supply of renewable energy through local and regional production and prioritizing the procurement of clean renewable energy. Can you walk us through the targets and how the city will increase the supply of renewable energy? Andrea Flowers  14:48 Well, achieving the 100% scenario will definitely put an increasing demand on electricity production and the delivery of electricity. So right now renewable energy projects are required to contribute about 8.5% towards the 100% scenario by 2050. Now, the targets are aggressive. So to meet our 2030 targets under the 100% scenario, collectively, we'll have to install a significant amount of clean, renewable energy. We're talking 631 megawatts of solar in the residential, commercial and utility sectors, but 100 megawatts in wind, 18 megawatts in hydro power, and three megawatts in biogas. And by 2030, we would also have to increase our storage to about 73 megawatts to reduce curtailment of renewable generation from 90% to 85%. And those, those are all our 2030 targets, they become even more aggressive in 2050. So how are we going to do it? What kind of things are we thinking about? Well, sort of more broadly in the community. We love to ramp up solar generation at a faster pace for at least the next five years, initially through a rooftop strategy, because on site net metering is the only available opportunity to connect with renewable energy generation to the grid. And then also because of the relative scarcity of renewable fuels, fuel based cogeneration can't be installed unless there is a rationale for doing so, to reduce the redundancy requirement or to support specific electricity system requirements. Existing co-gen plants that don't meet these criteria should retire as opportunities arise. And we'll be looking for a sizable amount of battery or other powered storage capacity to ensure that variable renewable generation can be shifted as we as periods of surplus, you know, vary between high demand and the relative curl curtailment of renewable generation. Dan Seguin  16:59 What are some of the best benefits that your project Energy Evolution will bring to the city and its residents. Does it include economic development and maybe...what else? Andrea Flowers  17:10 There's lots of benefits associated with Energy Evolution beyond the obvious reducing our greenhouse gas emissions. Certainly economic development is a key one. From that perspective, supporting Ottawa's local businesses in the transition towards a low carbon economy will help companies reduce their operating costs. And it represents an opportunity to create good quality local jobs and attract investment. Right now. ottawans spend about $3 billion a year on energy costs and most of that leaves the city so if we can generate more energy locally, we can keep a greater share of the energy dollars within our local economy. Canada's clean energy sector is growing faster than almost any other sector and it's attracting 10s of billions of dollars in investment every year. Already are clean energy sector accounts for about 300,000 jobs in Canada. And as part of the financial analysis, and part of the energy and emissions modeling we did for energy pollution. We looked at job creation and we predict for for building retrofits alone, we could generate as many as 38,000 jobs here in Ottawa. And then to your other part of your question beyond economic development, there's there's also other benefits. From a public health perspective, we expect that air quality could improve as we move away from fossil fuels causing a reduction in health related effects like heart disease and breathing problems. We hope that physical and mental health would improve as we get out and cycle and walk more instead of using personal vehicles. We may see an improvement in sleep patterns as the reduced noise levels from vehicles as we transition from fuels to electric vehicles which are much quieter. And as we insulate buildings to improve our heating. And then finally, there's also benefits associated with energy security and resiliency. With an increasing number of extreme events like ice storms and tornadoes. increasing our local renewable generation and supply provides affordable energy to residents and businesses and could help  with uninterrupted levels of service during those extreme weather events. Dan Seguin  19:28 Through an energy lens, what role will conservation and efficiency play in lowering greenhouse gas emissions for Ottawa? Where is that low hanging fruit? Andrea Flowers  19:42 Well, Energy Evolution's model is built on a conservation first scenario. It uses an integrated model approach. So if conservation doesn't happen first, we will effectively just run out of zero emission energy. The model looks at conservation and efficiencies across all sectors including Buildings transportation, electricity and natural gas. And really the low hanging fruit in that list is the electrification of private vehicles. So a gas power train has a fuel to wheels efficiency in the 20-30% range, whereas, a battery electric is more like a 90% efficiency range. So in our modeling, there's no other single measure which conserves as much primary energy as the conversion from gas or diesel to electric vehicles. Dan Seguin  20:30 Not to brag, but Hydro Ottawa has been in the renewable energy business for more than 130 years, and currently has built in clean generation to power a third of the city. Andrea, how important was it to engage with strategic partners like Hydro Ottawa, and Envari energy solutions? Andrea Flowers  20:52 Yeah. Well, first of all, thank you. It's, it's amazing that hydro Ottawa and their subsidiaries have become such a leader. In green energy and it is critical for us to work with partners like Hydro Ottawa. Throughout the development of energy evolution, we've worked with more than 200 strategic partners and technical experts and we know that the city alone can't achieve the scale of emission reductions required and that everybody has a role to play. Fortunately, Hydro Ottawa and its subsidiaries and Envari and Portage Power have been there. Since the beginning of the energy evolution process. They've provided input technical expertise, and you've been very generous about creating platforms like this one to amplify the messaging and engage broader audiences. Without Hydro Ottawa, it is highly unlikely that energy evolution could succeed. The 100% GHG reduction scenario foresees electrical demand more than doubling by 2050. So we need to work together to align our planning and forecasting identify opportunities and advocate together for policy changes at the provincial level. It's wonderful that hydro Ottawa has a long history of renewable energy generation and we need to keep expanding it. As I said earlier, local generation is key to meeting our targets since the province doesn't currently have plans to generate electricity with zero emissions grid. And because there's so many opportunities for economic development here locally. Dan Seguin  22:25 The transport sector accounts for approximately a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions and is one of the major sectors where emissions are still rising. Electrification is widely considered an attractive solution for reducing the dependency and environmental impact of road transportation. Where does the city stand with electrification of fleets like buses, EV charging stations, and maybe ebikes. Andrea Flowers  22:55 Now well, I'll go back to the beginning of the question for a minute because if transportation sector accounts for a quarter of global emissions. It's actually quite a bit higher in Ottawa. So community wide, by in 2018. Ottawa's transportation sector accounted for about 44% of Ottawa's GHG emissions. And partly that's because we don't have a large industrial base here in Ottawa, whereas globally, that would play a more significant role. But 44% of emissions in Ottawa are coming from the transportation sector. And in order to meet our 100% scenario target, transportation, we'll need to account for about 37% of our GHG reduction targets emissions. And the city's corporate target is to reduce GHG emissions 100% by 2040. And you'll notice that that's about 10 years earlier than the community. So in the model for our city operations, the model calls for fleets including our own transit and municipal fleets like by-law police ambulance calls for our fleet. To be zero emission by 2030. And then our commercial fleets to be up to can take a bit longer up to 2040. But the transition to zero emission must be a steady and incremental progress. You can't hit the target by backloading the model because then the the emissions are compounding. And although we expect that electrification will be key for the electrification of fleets, we haven't totally ruled out fuel cells. We have however, rolled out internal combustion power trains, even if they use a carbon neutral fuel, because they simply aren't as efficient. In terms of where does the city stand with electrification of our fleets and buses. The city has a corporate policy to include EV chargers at all new facilities and we're considering revising the policy to include EV chargers when we do major renovations or retrofits at City facilities. We continue to grow our own Electric fleet just in the last couple of weeks, the City of Ottawa has purchased four new hyundai konas for bylaw services, and there's some great information on  energyevolution@ottawa.ca about that. And then in terms of public chargers or general stances that we don't want to, we don't want to have any additional barriers to purchasing private electric vehicles. So we want to do what we can to ensure that there is sufficient public charging in municipal facilities and on municipal lands to support that. So the city is installing a new fast charger at Bob McCrory and it'll be a 150 kilowatt fast charger. And then we've partnered with Eydro Ottawa and Envari to install 13 new doubleheader chargers on city right away throughout the city. So those We'll be going in hopefully by the end of 2020. Back to the question around ebikes. We're encouraged by developments in E bikes and E scooters. And they certainly fit broadly under active transportation in the energy evolution strategy. But we haven't yet given them any detailed focus. So there is increasing interest amongst the public and it's a gap that we know we haven't addressed yet. Dan Seguin  26:28 As an example of conservation efficiency, are you able to talk about the city's LED streetlight conversion project and what the results have been? Andrea Flowers  26:38 Well, overall, it's been a resounding success. We've already met our energy and maintenance targets. Maintenance savings have given a knock off reduction in GHG emissions from a reduction in the deployment of service vehicles. And I would say, generally, the project seems to have helped with general widespread acceptance of conservation. And that helps us sell the concept of conservation in other areas across the city and the community as well. By the end of the project, I think that we will have changed more than 58,000 light fixtures to LEDs. And we will have reduced our energy by 60%, reduced GHG emissions by thousand tons per year and our operating costs by close to $5 million. So it's a resounding success. We've also seen co-benefits like reduced light pollution and although I've yet to confirm it with a biologist, I've heard anecdotally that the conversion of LED lights is starting to bring back fireflies into the city because the different color of light makes it easier for the fireflies to communicate amongst themselves. So on my to do list is to confirm that with a biologist but I think it is an interesting little tidbit and I choose to think that it may be true. Dan Seguin  27:54 Okay, you alluded to this earlier, so wondering if you could expand on what role will energy storage have in lowering the city's carbon future. Andrea Flowers  28:06 Thermal storage, renewable natural gas and battery storage all have a role to play in meeting Ottawa's GHG reduction targets. Thermal storage will likely be the most important kind of storage both seasonally and on a shorter term basis. So, seasonally or longer term storage will be important for how we operate geothermal systems and shorter term storage will be more buildings specific and could help us shave peak demands. Although we call exclusively for renewable natural gas in the model,  the gas grid will provide less energy than it does today and it will continue to be a large source of storage likely able to meet all demand without any supply for several weeks. And then finally, we need battery storage and the 100% model for electrical grid stability to manage variable generation. battery storage is required to reduce the curtailment renewable generation during periods of low demand, and although it's not modeled, we see the potential for storage to help with the economic competitiveness of electricity. And this ultimately will be important in helping Ottawa achieve our targets. Dan Seguin  29:15 Okay, Andrea, let's close this off with some rapid fire questions. I hope you're ready. Andrea Flowers  29:23 Ready Dan Seguin  29:24 What is your favorite word? Andrea Flowers  29:27 Zither - such a fun word to say it's a quirky instrument like a harp. You play on your lap and I've had one since a child and it's it's a fun word to say. I played the zither. Dan Seguin  29:41 What is the one thing you can't live without? Andrea Flowers  29:44 My man. Dan Seguin  29:46 What is something that challenges you Andrea Flowers  29:49 the status quo Dan Seguin  29:51 If you had one superpower, just one, what would it be? Andrea Flowers  29:55 Ah the ability to show people the future so that we can really see what the consequences of our actions and our decisions are. Dan Seguin  30:05 If you could turn back time and talk to your 18 year old self, what would you tell her? Andrea Flowers  30:10 Ah, I would say just follow a path of love. And you will find love in all aspects of your life. Trust that the things that you're interested in, will lead you interesting places and that the path might not always be clear, but there will always be something interesting along the way. Dan Seguin  30:34 And lastly, what do you currently find most interesting in your sector? Andrea Flowers  30:39 The intersection between science and politics. It's complex and interconnected and evolving quickly, so it is ever changing. Dan Seguin  30:51 Well, Andrea, we've reached the end of another episode of The ThinkEnergy podcast. I hope you had a lot of fun. Last question for you. How can our listeners learn more about you, your organization, how can they connect? Andrea Flowers  31:05 Well, to be honest, I think that they need to learn less about me and more about the important work that the City is doing and this project in particular Energy Evolution. If you want to learn more about climate change in Ottawa, then you can visit ottawa.ca/climatechange. And there you'll find links to both the mitigation work we do on how to reduce greenhouse gas emissions like Energy Evolution, as well as our adaptation work and how we will build a more resilient future for Ottawa in the face of a changing climate. So, lots of ways and lots of other ways to connect on there, you can go to ottawa.ca/climatechange or ottawa.ca/energyevolution. There you have a chance to sign up for our E newsletter, which focuses on climate change. You can learn more about the projects and how to get involved and You can take a survey on that tells us what kind of barriers you face on implementing climate action. Dan Seguin  32:09 Thank you for joining us today. I truly hope you enjoyed this episode of The ThinkEnergy podcast. For past episodes, make sure you visit our website hydroottawa.com/podcast. Lastly, if you found value in this podcast Be sure to subscribe. Cheers, everyone.

---Join us for our Summer Rewind series as we feature past podcast episodes!--- EPISODE #35: When we talk about the electrification of transportation, we tend to think about electric vehicles or light rail transit. But there's another sub-genre of electric transportation that is rapidly growing in popularity: e-bikes. In this episode, Seth Weintraub, an award-winning tech journalist and blogger, helps us tackle some of the myths surrounding e-bikes and helps us understand why they're becoming one of the greenest transportation options when it comes to urban traffic and environmental impact. Related Content & Links: Websites: https://www.electrek.co Linkedin: Seth Weintraub  - https://www.linkedin.com/in/sethweintraub/ Twitter: Seth Weintraub - @llsethj Great ebike reviews on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/electrekco  Transcript Dan Seguin  00:02 Hey everyone, welcome back. This is the ThinkEnergy podcast. When we talk about electrification of transportation, we tend to think about electric vehicles, buses, or light rail transit. But there's another subset of electric trains Transportation that is rapidly growing in popularity. With improvements to battery storage, we may just be entering a new golden age of transportation and mobility, driven by a range of factors from climate change technology, economics, in general consumer preference, the evolution of electric transportation is changing the landscape faster than we've seen in our history. Certainly the awareness of our own responsibility to reduce our own overall impact on the environment is a significant factor. The accounting firm Deloitte says that 300 million electric bikes will be out worldwide by 2023, which is 50% more than today, urban dwellers in particular are seeking convenient, eco healthy and affordable ways to move around congested cities. A criticism has been that e-bikes don't contribute to exercise since the motor does most of the work for you. But a new university of Boulder Colorado study shows that using an electrically powered bicycle on a regular basis can actually provide riders with an effective workout while improving some aspects of cardiovascular health, especially for riders who were previously inactive. The researchers noticed improvement in the rider's cardiovascular health, including increased aerobic capacity and improved blood sugar control. E-bikes and scooters are affordable now. They are efficient to operate, reduce congestion and ease commute times. They do increase physical activity and simply put - a lot of fun. Yes, e-bikes have a higher emission than a regular bicycle but they far outperform cars, including electric ones, similar to EV's e-bikes can help communities achieve their GHG emission reduction targets. What's interesting is that half of all e-bikes driving trips are shorter than 16 kilometers, with some averaging single trips of just nine kilometers. That's a no brainer distance to cover by e-bikes. Studies show that e-bike owners are replacing 46% of their car commutes, and 30% of their driving errands with a bike rides. Of course, like other electric forms of transportation. This takes support, buy in, and infrastructure investments from municipalities. With supportive cycling infrastructure in place e-bikes have the potential to substitute or completely replace almost all trips taken by a gasoline powered car -which could address congestion and pollution issues and mitigate parking challenges within urban areas, especially for downtown dwellers. So here's today's big question: Are two wheels better than four? In addition to tackling some of the myths surrounding e-bikes are the greenest transportation option when it comes to urban traffic, and environmental impact. Joining me today is a very special guest, Seth Weintraub, an award winning journalist and blogger. In 2003, Seth bought one of Tesla's first model S EVs off the assembly line. This began his love affair with electric vehicles and green energy, which he turned into electrek.co. Seth, I only scratched the surface of your bio in my introduction. Can you tell us a bit more about you, your work, and why electric transportation technology and the environment mean so much to you? Seth Weintraub  05:14 Alright, so my background is in engineering, I went to school for engineering got my post grad engineering. But I started about 10 years after I began my career in writing about technology. And that started with Apple and started 9to5Mac, about 12 years ago. And then that expanded to Google covering Google and covering, you know, the wider technology range. My interest in clean energy kind of began, when I got a Prius, but really kind of everything came together when I bought my first fully electric car, which was a 2013 Tesla. Model S, you know, I got it at the time, I started reading around about, you know, this product, which I thought was pretty incredible. And nobody was really talking intelligently about it, in my opinion, obviously. So I was like, Hey, I know how to do a blog, I know how to, you know, write about technology. I'm going to start up electrek. So that, you know, I didn't want to just say like, start up another 9to5 Tesla kind of site. I wanted to kind of hit the wider spectrum. At the time, I was super interested in solar, we were putting solar on your house, so we get the full, you know, the driving and electric car powered by the sun. At the time, Tesla wasn't a solar provider, they had Solar City which is, you know, kind of a preferred vendor at the time because you own both companies. But eventually they Tesla integrated Solar City into the company. And there are a lot of other solar platforms out there. So it's just a super interesting thing. And it's kind of scary if we don't kind of figure out the  getting fossil fuels out of our energy matrix. And so it's not just solar and electric cars, we like to talk about electric bikes in a big way. We talked about boats and trains, and you know, every other form of transportation and energy usage. And super interesting because it's changing so much right now. It's such a big part of, you know, the transformation that's going on around the globe. And obviously, it's super important. Dan Seguin  07:42 Now, I'd like to talk about electric bikes, which are gaining in popularity across the world. I'd be interested to hear about the technology behind e-bikes and break down any myth or misunderstanding about what they are and what they are not. Seth Weintraub  08:00 That's great - electric bikes, in my opinion are one of the big technology transformations happening right now. So you know as a background love to bikes used to be lead acid batteries and kind of the change in cars from lead acid and nickel cadmium batteries to lithium batteries kind of worked its way down to electric bikes. So, you know, 10 years ago, any electric bike you would find would probably be a lead acid battery so big and heavy and kind of not able to use the full potential of the battery. And that's gone down to these like bricks that are, you know, pretty small and sometimes even fit into the frame of the bike. So, um, but, you know, it just there's so much to talk about electric bikes. You know, they started kind of in earnest about five or six years ago becoming something that you know, everybody can jump on to you know, why are they great? So for me, you know, I, I live in an extremely hilly area, but even if I didn't, the extra speed for me makes my commute more like a car commute. So I can go to my coffee shop or you know to do run my errands on regular roads that cars occupy and I travel around 25 miles per hour. So even on big hills, a car doesn't overtake me very quickly, if at all. So, for me, it's a safety issue like I travel more like a car, cars aren't trying to pass me they're not stressed out. They can't overtake me very quickly. But it also opens up biking to a much broader swath of the population. So you know, if you have a five or 10 mile commute to work on a regular bike, you have to be quite fit and you're probably going to expect to arrive at your destination pretty sweaty in a regular bike. But with a an electric bike, you can kind of control how much assist you have, you know, some electric bikes have throttles and there's a whole litany of, you know, what's legal, where. But a throttle is it almost turns it into like a moped, where you don't even have to pedal if you don't want to. And obviously, the breeze in the air keeps you cool. Like, you know, it's 95 degrees. What is that? Like? 30 something Celsius out today, and everybody's like, I can't believe you're riding your bike. I'm like, when you're going 25 miles per hour, like it's pretty cool. Like there's a lot of wind hitting you and it's, it's really not that bad of a commute. So there are just so many components to it. And you know, I'm probably going off on all different directions, but it just enables a much broader swath of the population can go much further, much faster, much safer. Dan Seguin  10:57 Okay, Seth, who is the main consumer of e-bikes. Is it the adventurer or the urban city resident looking for a quick commute? Are there different classes of e-bikes and levels of motor systems? Can you maybe help me better understand the categories and the consumers? Seth Weintraub  11:18 Sure. So there are a lot of different consumers of E bikes. You have younger folks who just want to go really fast. You have older folks who may be their, you know, their legs and hips aren't what they were at one point and the bike makes it easier to go, city people there's, there's people who like high performance. There's the bikes that are pretty much motorcycles with pedals, and they can go 30-40 miles per hour. So I don't want to there's not just one group of e-bike owners there's they kind of cross the swath of the population. So, you know, you alluded to urban city residents man, like, you know, I live in the suburbs, but every time I go to New York City, I love having an E bike, I can get around much faster than anybody. I mean, I can beat an ambulance across town quite easily. So, for the urban people, like, you're just flying by traffic, there's no, you know, obviously, you don't want to blow any traffic lights and you want to obey everything. But like, for the most part, you're going to be the fastest vehicle on the road. And but for suburbanites like me, like, you know, going to the store, for instance, one thing people don't think about is like, you probably have to park pretty far away and you have to, you know, walk out to your car and do all this other stuff. And by the time you eliminate it, because when you write an E-bike, you pull it out of your garage and drive right up to the store. By the time you do all those things that you have to deal with, you know, find a parking spot, and drive around, whatever. By the time you do all that you're pretty much getting to your destination at this same amount of time with any bike that then when you are with a car, so you know it for me like, when I go somewhere in a car, I kind of just space out and forget about it. But when you're on a bike, it's like a ton of fun you're, you know, hitting the turns  and flying and sees how fast you can pedal. So it's just better in just about every other way. Obviously. When there's a lot of snow when it's raining, that presents some issues, but it's just, you know, as a human being, I think the experience is so much better. You're way more in touch with your environment, you're way more in touch with the people around you. It's just, it's just better in every single way. So there are three official categories of e-bikes in the US and then there's a kind of a fourth category that's unofficial. A category one is a pedal assist up to 20 miles per hour, category two is pedal assist up to 20 miles per hour with a throttle, category three is pedal assist up to 28 miles per hour. And then there's kind of an unofficial category for which is the throttle for 28 miles per hour. And then, you know, in the EU they have a kind of a different kind of motorcycle-ish electric motorcycles category up to around 35 miles per hour. Dan Seguin  14:23 Thanks, Seth. What is the biggest obstacle and/or opportunity for the mass adoption of E-bikes? Does it take him in this capacity to build an E bike movement? Or where does it begin? Do e-bikes offer a transit solution that can be seamlessly integrated into sustainable city features? Seth Weintraub  14:44 I'm gonna say like, the roads, like safety, is kind of like the number one thing I think keeps people off of bikes in general. But you know, e-bikes are certainly a part of that. That when bike-specific lanes get put into cities, biking goes way up, safety goes way up. There are even bike lanes. Like if you're on a street with a bike lane. There are still quite a few accidents that happen there. It's better than no bike lane at all. But, having a dedicated, walled-off avenue for bikes is kind of the way to go. And that's one way of jump-starting bikes. My personal belief is biking is going to start with people like getting the word out, getting people educated, getting people on bikes, like, you know,  I'm kind of an evangelist, so to speak. So, you know, I drive my bike to the coffee shop every day, which is about three or four miles or five kilometers. So they, you know, people see the bike and they want to ask questions, I'm like, Hey, get on, go ride around. See what you think and I probably sold, I don't know, 10 or 15 bikes, and just by putting somebody's butt on the seat. So I think you know, if a city is looking for a way to get more people on bikes, they should probably just say, you know, have events like, hey, come grab the bike, or, hey, we're going to do e-bikes, you can rent a bike for give it a try free for day, that kind of thing. You know, obviously Uber's jump and line bike and all those are, are good ways for cities to kind of get into E-biking, although I would say those bikes aren't a great experience. They're certainly better than the equivalent non electric versions. Dan Seguin  16:44 Now. e-bikes give us another device to charge. Are batteries getting better. How long can they last before recharging? Seth Weintraub  16:54 Great question. So e-bikes are certainly getting better as batteries get better. technology gets better. One thing I would like to see is e-bikes to adopt USBC. So that's kind of the standard that your MacBook and your PC or laptops are using - goes up to 100 watts would be nice if not only could they charge via USBC, but they could, you know, maybe, you know, in the wintertime when you're not using your bike, you can use the battery as a backup for your home. So if your power goes out, you can use your laptop or power your phone, you know, it adds more utility to the battery on your bike. So that's one thing I think that could make batteries better beyond the more charge. As far as how long do they last before charging, that's, you know, there's big batteries and small batteries and powerful batteries and non-powerful batteries. A typical battery for any bike on a typical e-bike would probably take you around 10 or 20 miles with you know, some pedaling involved. There are  bikes that go hundred miles and there are bikes that probably, you know, you have trouble making it five miles. So you're going to want to check that out probably check out our review maybe on a lab check to see you know what real world range bikes get but you know the least expensive bikes out there, you know, a bike that costs like $700 on Amazon will take you 10 or 20 miles. Dan Seguin  18:24 Here are two things that I usually avoid talking about on the show: finances and weight. But I have to know, what is the cost range of any bike and how heavy are they? Now, having had to get one on a bike rack to a car, I can attest, they're fairly heavy... Seth Weintraub  18:43 Yeah. So they're heavier. I think a typical one will weigh around 50 pounds. And you know that's off, probably about double what a typical non electric bike weighs. The good news there is you can kind of just pull off the battery in a lot of cases. So like, if you're putting it on the rack, you can pull off the battery, which is, you know, it'll bring it down to 35 pounds, you still have a heavy motor and some more heavy components that are going to make it a little heavier. But you can put the battery in your car while you're taking it out. So, the cost range is another really tricky one. I mean, you can get very inexpensive ones down, you know four or $500 but those are the smaller tired ones maybe the foldables, very low power very small batteries. You know, there's like four major North American, maybe five brands, just off the top of my head - There's like Saunders evelo Luna juice, and probably the biggest one is Rad. Yeah, so they those are typically cost, like I just bought my father-in-law a Rad runner for I think around 1100 dollars US and you know that's kind of a base model bike it's got fat tires and then you know we got ourselves a Juice Scorpion, which is kind of a more like a more petty looking one and that's that goes for around 1500 dollars you know that's going to be your range of like solid bikes you know 1000 to 1500 is good and then if you're looking for like bike store quality bikes, you know track specialized, you're looking at $2-3,000 I'm currently my daily driver right now is a Gazelle T-10, which is a fantastic bike. You know, all the power I need but still is a biking type of experience. And that that I think runs retails around $3-4,000 depending on the configuration, so pretty wide range. Dan Seguin  21:06 Okay, let's move on, with the growing concern around preservation and sustainability for future generations, are electric bikes, one of the most environmentally sound means of motorized transportation in the world today? Seth Weintraub  21:23 Absolutely. And, you know, I didn't allude to it earlier but when you think about how much power you actually need to get, you know, the 5-10 mile commute that you do every day compared to even an electric car - it's a small fraction. So for instance, for my an entire week of going, you know, I do a lot of my work at the coffee shop in town for an entire week, I can go off of one 500 watt hour battery. So, you know, in comparison that would drive my Tesla probably about a mile. So, you know, I'm going, I don't know, 20 times as far as you can go on a car on the same amount of energy. So, you know, if everybody rode a bike instead of, I mean even an electric car and then you know, obviously, gasoline cars are much worse on the environment than that. But I mean, just even compared to an electric car, an electric bike is so much more fuel efficient. You know, obviously 20 people could ride bikes for one person riding a car in terms of energy usage. Dan Seguin  22:38 Thanks to our green space, and dedicated bike lanes our great city, Ottawa, has a thriving cycling community. What cities in the world are leading the e-bike movement through Policy and Planning? Where are the success stories that Canada can learn from? Seth Weintraub  22:58 You know, I think the world leader and in biking at least in the Western world would probably be Amsterdam. They kind of took a look way back in the 50s and 60s at their car culture city and kind of reinvented their city around biking and pedestrian traffic and you know obviously the city is much better for it. You know, each city is different. I've been to some places like even Berlin. It had a great way to get around on bikes, there's like dedicated bike lanes and every area. I lived in Paris for a year. They had a couple years they had something called the belly there where this was way early, maybe 10-15 years ago before you know all the  bikes and Uber jumps and you just rent a bike from Any spot, you know, within a few blocks and you can go to any other spot within a few blocks, their roads weren't as bike friendly, but they had, you know, at least a system to get on the bike and get off the bike really easily. So, you know, that's my experience. You know, unfortunately, the US doesn't have too much to offer there. You know, we're very car-culture type of place. I'm trying to think. I don't remember Toronto being a very bike centric area, although I did enjoy a long bike ride in Vancouver. So maybe that's, that's somewhere else to look. Dan Seguin  24:44 And Seth, what about E-scooters? What are your thoughts? Seth Weintraub  24:48 Well, I would argue so I've used e-scooters, I would argue that bikes are way safer. You're just standing versus sitting. You're actually getting some exercise on bike scooters are with their smaller wheels not as adept at hitting potholes and stuff like that. I mean, I like scooters, they're energy efficient compared to cars, they're not picking up nearly as much space. But for me, personally, my experience on the bike was much better than a scooter. Dan Seguin  25:24 Other than the demand for environmentally friendly products, what are the major factors that have contributed to the widespread adoption of electric bike growth in recent years? Do geography and culture play a part? Seth Weintraub  25:42 Geography definitely plays a part. Certainly, you know, hills make electric bikes more appealing, culture in the sense that you know, if you see somebody riding an e-bike, you become more open to riding with yourself, if your friends and family pick one up and you're going to probably give, give one a try. Other factors that contribute, I think, you know, as I mentioned, for more out there, kind of breeds more, more adoption. And certainly like the technology getting better. The prices of really good batteries are coming down because of all the electric cars and other innovations happening. So it's a combination of things. I'm trying to think of other stuff, you know, hopefully, websites like ours are bringing electric bikes to the forefront, you know, maybe you're a Tesla person and you're like, Hey, you know, I like reading electric for the Tesla coverage, but there's all these really awesome e-bikes we see, maybe pick one of those up too and throw it in my trunk. Dan Seguin  27:05 Now, what's it like to ride an e-bike in traffic? Numerous studies identify the issues of safety as the key barrier to e-bike adoption. The two primary safety issues are one: the actual safety of the e-bike itself, including its higher operating range relative to a regular bicycle, and two: safely writing an e-bike on the road, Seth, how can these concerns be addressed? And what should beginners know? Seth Weintraub  27:36 So I agree with that, I think we talked about it earlier about safety being the probably the biggest barrier to e-bike adoption. If you are going to ride on roads. Obviously speed kills the faster you go - when you have an accident, they're more likely you're going to get hurt. But the flip side of that is that if you're driving, if you're riding your bike and you're behaving more like a car, you'll get treated more like a car. So instead of riding, you know, on the white line on the right side of the road, you ride in the middle of the road, and you're and you're riding the speed limit. So, you know, if you're in that 25 mile per hour zone, or 30-35 mile per hour zone, and you're actually going close to the speed limit, cars aren't going to feel the need to overtake you. So you can kind of become one, you know, one of them on the road, just that you know, kind of like a motorcycle would kind of think of itself as a, you know, a road citizen. So that for me is the big difference. When I ride around town or people don't try to overtake me because I'm, I'm riding the same speed as cars. Obviously, when somebody sees somebody on a bike, though, they're in the car, their first thought is Oh crap, I got to you know, figure out a way to get around this guy, but, you know, if I'm riding in the middle of the road and I'm going the speed limit, there's really no reason to try to get around me. And they just kind of settle in behind me. Hopefully. Dan Seguin  29:10 Okay, Seth, how about we close off this podcast with rapid fire questions? I hope you are ready. Seth Weintraub  29:18 Oh, God. Yeah. Dan Seguin  29:20 What is your favorite word? Seth Weintraub  29:23 Electrification. Dan Seguin  29:24 What is one of the things you can't live without? Seth Weintraub  29:27 I'm going to get sappy and say: family. Dan Seguin  29:29 What is something that challenges you? Seth Weintraub  29:35 Well, you know, my day to day is publishing. So I'm going to probably go with Google's publishing world. Dan Seguin  29:44 If you could have one superpower, what would it be? Seth Weintraub  29:48 Just flying would be fine. Dan Seguin  29:50 If you could turn back time and talk to your 18 year old self, what would you tell them? Seth Weintraub  29:56 Relax, maybe like things are going to come together. Pretty good. I don't know. I kind of feel like there's a lot of anxiety around 18. So one of those, you know, don't, don't get too discouraged. Dan Seguin  30:15 And lastly, what do you currently find most interesting in your sector? Seth Weintraub  30:21 So for us, what's super interesting is that we are, you know, at a crossroads. So it's, what's interesting to us is like, we know where we're going to be in a few years where we know that, you know, Norway is a good example. They're kind of ahead of the curve 60% of the cars they buy, and obviously, a lot of their bikes are electrified. We know we're going to get there but it's always interesting to see how we're going to get there. It's interesting watching people's minds change. I was at a socially distant dinner party last night, and somebody who I had no idea was interested in electric vehicles was like, Yeah, I got to get an electric bike. And I know my next car is going to be electric. And I was like, Oh, this is kind of going mainstream now. So that's kind of like, what's super interesting for me. Dan Seguin  31:21 While Seth, we reached the end of another episode of the ThinkEnergy podcast, last question for you. How can our listeners learn more about you? How can they connect? Seth Weintraub  31:31 So visit Electrek.co We, um, there. We have a podcast every Friday. And I'm @llsethj on Twitter. That's kind of my outlet of choice for non-story items. Dan Seguin  31:52 Again, Seth, thank you so much for joining me today. It was a lot of fun. I hope you enjoyed it. Cheers. Seth Weintraub  32:00 Thank you very much. I really appreciate it. Dan Seguin  32:04 Thank you for joining us today. I truly hope you enjoyed this episode of The ThinkEnergy podcast. For past episodes, make sure you visit our website HydroOttawa.com/podcast. Lastly, if you found value in this podcast, be sure to subscribe. Cheers, everyone.

---Join us for our Summer Rewind series as we feature past podcast episodes!--- EPISODE #34: What happens when you use a network of hot and cold water pipes, bury them underground, and then use them to efficiently heat and cool buildings – or even whole communities? You get something called district energy. In this episode, Jeff Westeinde, President of Zibi Canada and Founding partner of Windmill Development Group, shares his passion for environmental sustainability, designing communities to support One Planet Living, and leveraging age-old systems like district energy as a means of achieving a zero carbon footprint. Related Content & Links: Hydro Ottawa – https://hydroottawa.com/ Zibi Canada – https://www.zibi.ca Linkedin - Jeff Westeinde: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeff-westeinde-a46b4843/ --------------------------- Transcript Dan Seguin  00:02 Hey, everyone, welcome back. This is the ThinkEnergy podcast. What happens when you use a network of hot and cold water pipes, bury them underground and then use them to efficiently heat and cool buildings - even whole communities, you get something called 'district energy'. And it's not a new concept. A quick search will reveal that its origins can be traced back to the second century BC to the invention of the hypocaust heating systems that powered the hot water bath of the ancient Roman Empire. Famously a hot water distribution system in Chaudes-Aigues, in France, is regarded as the first real district heating system. It used geothermal energy to provide heat for about 30 houses in the 14th century, and the US Naval Academy in Annapolis began steam district heating in 1853. If you're like me, maybe you're wondering why modern civilization did not continue to use this efficient and environmentally sustainable technology more. There are some European countries such as Denmark, where district energy is mandated, but for the most part, it is largely gone the way of ancient Rome and public bathing. The latter is not such a bad thing in my mind, with more and more socially conscious citizens around the globe, district energy is once again seeing a surge in popularity and becoming a preferred method, thanks to its lower and energy efficient operating costs, reduced supply disruptions, and environmentally sound methods of heating and cooling buildings, municipalities and property owners are intrigued by this ancient alternative energy technology. So, here's today's big question: Is the world ready to embrace district energy as a viable means to power our communities? Is the nation's capital ready to have the first one planet zero carbon community district energy system in the country? Well, my guest today is the founding partner of the THEIA partnership. One of Canada's most sustainable real estate development companies, as well as the president of Zibi Canada, which aims to be Canada's most sustainable development project. He's also an active investor and entrepreneur in both environmental, clean tech and real estate sector with active investments in solar energy, site remediation, and the beneficial reuse of waste. Dear listeners, please welcome Jeff Westeinde. Jeff, can we start by you telling us a bit about your background, the Zibi project and what drives your passion to build sustainable communities? Jeff Westeinde  04:02 Well, so I guess my background, I always say I'm an entrepreneur. I'm an engineer by training, but entrepreneur by practice. So I've, I've had one, what I call real job in my career, I worked for a company for a little over a year, it quickly became apparent that I was unemployable. So I had to start my own business. And I've always been in the environmental sector. So I started I started my career as an environmental contractor cleaning up industrial messes and some of the wastes of the past. And as part of that, I would watch our clients the way they were cleaning up properties, and then what they would do to redevelop them. And I was pursuing trying to, you know, clean up the environment, make the planet a better place. And yet, so the practices we were using, were actually making it worse. We're trucking contaminated soils. You know, the time I lived in BC, we're picking up soil, putting it in a dump truck and hauling it across the Rocky Mountains into a landfill in Alberta. And nobody can tell me that's good for the environment. So very good. quickly decided that we shouldn't say very quickly but decided while I continue to move up the food chain, and start to buy contaminated properties and start to develop places and communities. And because we were purchasing contaminated properties, the commitment that we had was, let's do better than we've done before. So let's push the envelope about how can we live in a sustainable way? How can we ensure that what we're building today doesn't cause the problems that we're cleaning up on the very site for developing so that's maybe a bit of a background as to you know, why how I got into this and in my passion around, you know, leaving, like, I don't know if you're ever in the wilderness, but there's a rule, leave the campsite better than you found it. And I think that rule, that should be a planet wide rule, and it's historically as you know, as not being so. Dan Seguin  05:51 Okay, Jeff, you're on the record saying that the way we build communities does not support health, happiness or the environment. What do you mean by that? And how does Zibi differentiate? Jeff Westeinde  06:07 So, I might even be so bold as to say that, I would argue that most of our planning, especially in North America, is actually shortening the lifespan of our own citizens. And that's because we're so car reliant. We're so socially isolated in the way that we build. So think about a typical suburb. In a typical suburb, if you want to get up and, you know, go get a coffee, buy some milk, bring your kids to school, the very first thing you do is go hop in your car and drive. And that that leads to, you know, the stats that can predict the rate of diabetes, the rate of obesity, the rate of all sorts of other chronic diseases by the postal code you live in, was shocking. So, this car centric suburban lifestyle is not good for you. So that's the health side of it. The happiness side of it, I'll just point to one stat. And that's that you can use, there are statistics that say you can determine the level of happiness of somebody by how many of their neighbors they know by first name. Well, when you live in the suburbs, you know, you might know 2, 3, 4 neighbors, or those people whose kids are your age, or those guys you play hockey with, but you don't have the unexpected collisions as you're walking to the coffee shop or as you're bringing your kids to school. So again, that urban sprawl arguably leads to a lot of source of social isolation. And if something happens to an older person, you fall, you break a leg, even as a young person and you're inside your house. Similarly, you're not looking out your window and seeing people and waving at them and those types of things. So how we build our communities, I think is really important for health, happiness and obviously for environmental sustainability. And what we're doing at Zibi is making sure that you will not be car centric, that you do have these collisions with your neighbors. As you're walking around the neighborhood. We actually have social programming that, you know, we have snowshoe nights and that when Cirque du Soleil comes, we have a night that is just for the residents of Zibi that come, you know those kinds of things to make sure you feel like a part of that community. Dan Seguin  08:28  How did you discover the one planet system? What can you tell us about it and your goal to build the first one in Canada? Jeff Westeinde  08:38 Well, so we'll talk about how we discovered it first, and that's good. Myself and my business partners were behind the very first LEED Platinum buildings in Canada. So we built the first LEED Platinum building in BC, Alberta, Ontario, and in the country as a whole and the LEED Platinum building we built in Alberta - I was visiting one day A couple years after we'd built it, and LEED Platinum is literally the Platinum standard, the most sustainable in the lead system. And I watched one of the residents of his LEED Platinum condominium building drive a Hummer SUV into the parking garage, and said, you know, it's great that our building is sustainable, but we really have an impact and how the users are using the building and how they're, how they're living their lives. So we started scouring the planet, literally to say, Well, is there a system that would really impact not only how we build our buildings and how they operate at a point in time, but how do we engage the people, the users that are using those places? So one planet, we get rated on things like health and happiness and social engagement, along with all the other architectural and engineering features of a community. And the way one planet works: very simple. The name says it all we have to live as if we only have one planet. Most people when I say that look at me and sort of go, but we only do have one planet. And we need to remind them that if you live like a typical Canadian, you're using four planets of resources to sustain your unsustainable lifestyle, and Americans using five planets, Europeans using three planets, and all we're doing is stealing from future generations, and the developing world to sustain our unsustainable lifestyles. So one planet really is all about both environmental sustainability, like technical sustainability and social sustainability, with one planet worth of resources, and it's a very holistic program. Very audacious goals, we're going to talk about zero carbon. So as you know, Zibi is in the nation's capital in Ottawa and Gatineau. You know, we are we are today we're going to be at plus 34 degrees. Six months from now we'll be at minus 34 degrees Celsius and to be zero carbon in this environment. It's the Holy Grail. So achieving one planet is not an easy thing to do very audacious. But that's where we said, No, that's the bar we need to hit, we need to again, leave our campsite better than we came to it. Dan Seguin  11:13 I was fascinated that this method, 'district energy' dates back, like I think is 3000 or 4000 years to the time of the Roman Empire. What are some of the key benefits of the energy system you're implementing in your community? And why has it taken this long for folks to embrace it with it's being around for so long? Jeff Westeinde  11:40 Well, like most technological breakthroughs, it is not the technology itself or even the concept itself that gets in the way, its people. So regulators, you know, if you look at how our grid works, say in Ontario, you cannot run a district electrical system. I can't, I couldn't produce energy and give it to my neighbor. Because we have a regulatory body that says you can't do it. And there are good reasons for that it was around safety and security and all those types of things. But we've ended up with all of these barriers, that that would prohibit the transportation and sale of energy. And, you know, I talked about electricity. But what's very interesting at Zibi - our district energy system is just hot and cold water. And there are no regulations currently in Ontario and Quebec, around moving hot and cold water. So that allowed us to start a district energy system. Answer so yeah. Again, the reason I would say you don't see more of them is the regulatory hurdles to implement the district energy system are enormous. However, the benefits are huge. And I'll use a very, you know, high level example that if you were to have a, you know, a Shopify data center, a good Canadian company, unlike Amazon, as a for instance. That is in constant cooling. So it's rejecting heating all the time. Right? And beside it, you have the Nordic spa, another great company that always needs heating, but needs to therefore be rejecting cooling. When you put those two side by side, and they're swapping energy back and forth. So your load is so much less. That's the concept of District energy is that by sharing and you know, a commercial building has different loads than a residential building has different loads than a retail building. By sharing those loads, they have different peaks, either for peak shades, you'd be you have less capital expenditure and you're more efficient. Why is it taking so long? It drives me crazy, but I really do think it's regulation is the key item why. Dan Seguin  13:52 Aside from regulation, what have been the challenges you encountered bringing this technology to market in Canada? The sight of your one planet community alone, straddling Ontario and Quebec, is really unique. Tell us about the challenges and how your passion has gotten you through. Jeff Westeinde  14:12 Yeah, I'm not sure how long this podcast is, but I could talk for a week about the challenges. Yeah, as you talked about, we do span the provincial border between Ontario and Quebec. You know, we jokingly say, both sides have a different word for everything. Because one speaks French one speaks English. Even the rule of law is different to one side of the other the legal system. So, you know, we need to repeat everything twice when we do this, but what I'll tell you is, I would say that the way that we've overcome what are just an enormous amount of challenges, I won't even get into what they all are, but it was it was crazy. Boy, when we overcome it was we shared our vision. And actually, I would say was our community's vision of saying, this is where our region started. Arguably, this is where, you know, the roots of our country started was on this site. And when we when we purchased the property was a fenced off locked off contaminated former industrial site that nobody had seen unless you worked at domtar. For probably 100 years, people didn't realize there's a waterfall in the middle of the city. What the community talked about in the vision that we had was no, we need to do something truly world class like something that people would come to our region and say Quebecers Ontarians, Canadians, look at the communities and the places that they create. And with that vision of being world class, we were fortunate that that politicians in the region, federal, municipal and provincial, all endorsed out the community endorse it. So when we started to bump up against bureaucracy and regulations, we were able to remind everybody that our commitment or contract to all of our stakeholders was, we're going to do some world class. Now world class, meaning different, and bureaucracies and regulations exist to enforce the same. So we were able to say, listen, you've got to empower, talk to the politicians, you've got to empower the bureaucrats who are paid to make sure that everybody does everything the same, to say, No, we've got to look at this one differently. We're not looking to do anything unsafe or unreasonable. But there's a better way and we've got to find it. And it was really that vision of world class and the endorsement that we got from all of the public stakeholders who said, yeah, we want to be world class. We don't want to just build another suburb of the City of Ottawa or Gatineau. Dan Seguin  16:47 Now through a marketing lens, how did you position this alternative energy system that provides heating and cooling to your communities' new housing projects? What was the value proposition for prospective buyers and investors. Jeff Westeinde  17:03 I think the key one, one of the lessons we've learned about sustainability and building sustainable buildings and building sustainable communities, is, most consumers don't, you know, while it's a nice to have being sustainable, it's not something that they're making a purchasing decision around. That's changing. I think more and more people are starting to look at that, but historically hasn't been important. So the key to sustainability is, we need to, we're going to allow you to be much more environmentally sustainable, socially sustainable, without any impact to your lifestyle. So when it comes to district heating and cooling, we said, listen, we're going to deliver you zero carbon district heating and cooling at the same market cost as a carbon based system, and you won't know. If you know you're going to turn your heat on, it's going to get hot, you're going to turn up your cooling on it's going to get cool, and you're not going to pay any more of the market. So that was that batten marketing. I mean, that's a no brainer to everybody that Okay, hold on, I get the exact same as I would get in a carbon based system but I'm zero carbon or more sustainable. That's a pretty easy sell at that point. Dan Seguin  18:11 Okay, now I'd like to explore design aspects. District energy equipment inside a building occupies about one fifth of the area of conventional systems that boilers and chillers take up. I'm assuming this provides more flexibility in designing your buildings and community. By eliminating traditional HVAC systems, what building design options did this enable you to expand on? Jeff Westeinde  18:44 There's some easy ones like if you think about rooftop patios, as a for instance, you know, if you have a rooftop patio beside a big chiller that's making a bunch of noise is not a great rooftop. So by  being able to eliminate that equipment. You know, our rooftop patios are much nicer. But really as a place maker, as a developer, the key aspect for us was if you know if you take all of that mechanical and electrical distribution space, and you end up with instead real estate that you can use, it's another added benefit to saying that that district energy makes financial sense or can make financial sense. It wasn't easy to unlock that but can make financial sense. So, so yeah, it obviously the less constraints you have on a building, the more flexibility you have and district is one tool for that for sure. Dan Seguin  19:45 Now, wondering if you could zero in on the energy distribution system that harnesses excess heat from the Kruger paper mill on the Ottawa River and the temporary thermal plant that was or is built to serve residents businesses in your community. Jeff Westeinde  20:02 Sure, yeah. So are, you know, like talking about the benefits, or sorry, the rationale behind district that if you have different energy cycles between neighboring buildings, you can share that energy. Our district energy system is actually based on that very same principle that Kruger operates a tissue mill, directly across from Parliament Hill. They, it's a very efficient, very successful mill. But as part of that process, they bring in millions of litres of water a day, heated up to over 40 degrees Celsius. Use it several times in their papermaking process, but then discharge it into the Ottawa River at about 30 degrees Celsius, anywhere from 25 to 30. So what we're doing is saying listen, you're discharging the millions of liters of hot water into the Ottawa River. Why don't we strip that heat so then what we're doing is we're taking it from 25 to 30 degrees down to seven to 10 degrees and discharging out into the Ottawa. River in our heating system or in the heating season. So that's the concept behind it's very rudimentary engineering, it's strictly heat transfer between water. So, so pretty straightforward from that point of view. What the temporary plane that you speak about is our district energy system. That backbone heating system at Kruger is not yet built that's getting built this season. However, we have users in our buildings right now. So, we have temporary plants that are providing that but the infrastructure for the district the pipes in the streets and hot and cold water system is there. So those temporary plants are going to operate for about another year, after which will be on our permanent system. Dan Seguin  21:44 In addition to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and improving energy resilience. Is it fair to say that district energy deliver economies of scale in areas with high population? What are some of the short and long term benefits for the owner and end user alike? And how do these factor into the government carbon reduction targets? Jeff Westeinde  22:12 Well, yeah, so the short term is if you can be more efficient, so if you have dense populations with different energy cycles, so different peaks and whatnot, as we talked about earlier, you need to spend less capital because you're peaking is at a lower level. And you're sharing energy between so that your overall initial energy utilization from the grid or from the gas system is lower because you're sharing more so overall that drives efficiency. And at the end of the day efficiency then drives lower greenhouse gas emissions and ideally, lower and more stable costs because your energy inputs are a lower percentage of the overall district. So say in our case, you if we're harnessing heat from Kruger, there are no escalation in the cost of that heat. It is waste industrial heat that otherwise wouldn't go anywhere. Whereas if we're connected to the Ontario grid, as you know, you know, costs have escalated very significantly. So that energy input if that is our key input, our energy costs are going to be higher. So we're fortunate that again, the combination of we sit in Ontario and in Quebec, so we have two different electrical and two different gas grids. We have waste heat and our cooling is going to come largely from the Ottawa River. So we have low cost inputs with waste heat and Ottawa River cooling. And we have four different grids we can tap into for alternative and for other energy if need be. So that then allows us to control our costs. So again, just an example of how you can drive efficiency and provide more price stability, while at the same time reducing emissions. Dan Seguin  24:00 Okay. Do alternative energy sources like district energy reduce exposure to fluctuating energy prices? How are the rates/cost determined for residents? Are they comparable to current rates? And are they stable? Jeff Westeinde  24:19 Yeah, so, yes, not all district energy systems are the same. Obviously, it depends on what those inputs are. But in the case of the Zibi community utility, our district energy system, but then our key inputs are that waste industrial heat and cooling base from the Ottawa River, both of which obviously have are stable. There's there is no Yeah, well, I shouldn't say we have some commercial transactions that go on without but not like the grid that allows us to decrease our reliance on the grid for other inputs. So to answer the question on rates, yes, our rates are comparable to market. And we've actually indexed them to the price of Quebec hydroelectricity. And for anyone that understands electrical grids, I would suggest that in North America, Quebec is likely the most stable grid in all of North America. I would say that it is a national utility for the province of Quebec. And I would say, you know, all Canadians are very proud of our healthcare and if they ever tried to take it away, there'd be riots in the streets. I would suggest that if anybody tried to raise electrical rates in Quebec, similar to what's happened Ontario, there would be even bigger riots in the streets. So, you know, we are expecting that will allow us to provide really stable pricing over the long term to our, to our customers. Dan Seguin  25:47 Now, how important was it to find a strategic partner like Hydro Ottawa that had more than 100 years of experience and a strong track record to create safe and reliable utility infrastructure, Jeff Westeinde  26:03 The partnership with hydro auto was critical. And again, consumer acceptance of that of the district energy system. You know, if you think about reliability if you're a consumer at Zibi, and you said, Okay, well what happens if my heating or cooling goes off? Who do I call if I see, well, you know, I am Jeff and here's my cell phone, you know, call me up at the cottage and I'll see if I can help you. That's not exactly reassuring. When you say 'Well, you call Hydro Ottawa" and they will is not who I would normally, you know, they, they're, they're, you know, the relative reliability stats of Hydro Ottawa better than me, but it's 99.999 something percent uptime, you know, 24 hour response, etc., etc. So, being able to bring that credibility of a utility operator to our district was absolutely critical for overall consumer acceptance and I would even say regulatory acceptance. You know, when we started talking about listen we're going to be moving hot and cold water in the you know energy in the form of hot and cold water around the around our community all municipal officials provincially "Okay, let you know if they did you have experience with this?" when we say well, Hydro Ottawa is our partner, it is an automatic acceptance of all know, okay, you guys are credible we understand let's carry on. So don't having Hydro Ottawa as a partner has been truly exceptional for us to be able to pioneer this, Dan Seguin  27:29 Jeff, in addition to district energy, what else is he planning to feature in terms of other advanced technology and innovation to achieve zero carbon living for the residents and tenants on site? Jeff Westeinde  27:46 Yeah, again, I know your podcast is not that long so I could talk forever about this, but I'll give you some key examples. So you know, again, trying to decrease reliance on carbon based transportation systems. So you know, the personal vehicle. You know, having car sharing, having excellent access to transit, when you're looking at other things that have a carbon footprint, how we build our buildings, the components that go into our buildings, the materials that go into our buildings, some are very carbon intensive. So again, we're targeting those that aren't carbon intensive. Even things like if you look at logistics, you know, when you buy a head of lettuce at the at the grocery store, the carbon it took to get that lettuce to the grocery store is embedded in that very product. So having urban agriculture, you'll see urban gardens, we've got a couple on site now. So all sorts of areas where anywhere where we can target things that are that use carbon to get delivered to or to, as part of the system that we're in. We're looking at incrementally changing all of those things. And those increments when they add up, turn into some big numbers. So that's really our focus. Dan Seguin  29:06 Jeff, how about we close off with some rapid fire questions? Are you ready to go? What is your favorite word? Jeff Westeinde  29:15 Serendipity. Yeah, I love serendipity. Because good things happen when you're not paying attention. Dan Seguin  29:20 What is one thing you can't live without? Jeff Westeinde  29:24 That's an easy one. My wife. I could be dead without that woman! Dan Seguin  29:30 What is something that challenges you? Jeff Westeinde  29:33 The word "No." I'm not good at taking the word 'No', it's how Zibi exists. Dan Seguin  29:38 If you could have one superpower, what would it be? Jeff Westeinde  29:41 I'd love to be a shapeshifter, be able to get inside different systems, different beings and understand how and why they work. I have endless curiosity. So I think being a shapeshifter would be amazing. Dan Seguin  29:53 If you had to turn back time and talk to your 18 year old self, what would you tell them? Jeff Westeinde  29:59 First, I would say smarten up and stop doing dumb things. But no, I think the one thing I would say is listen, relax. You know, something that has come to ring true with me, the Roman philosopher Seneca said, you know, "luck happens when opportunity meets preparedness". And I've been very fortunate to be lucky. But there's only one thing I can control in there. I can't control luck, I can't control opportunity. All I can do is control preparedness. So get prepared and just relax, pay attention, good things will happen. Dan Seguin  30:31 And lastly, what do you currently find most interesting in your sector? Jeff Westeinde  30:36 I love the fact that public health - so right now, you know, as you know, we're in the middle of a covid pandemic - public health is leading that across our country. But here in Ottawa, it's Vera Etches, I love the fact that our public health officials are starting to be included in our urban planning policies. So in Ottawa, Vera Etches participated in that. So remember I said earlier, you know, the way we plan is shortening the lifespan of our citizens. Public health starting to get involved in that. I'm really hoping that there will be an influence where they'll say, "if we planned communities this way, then here are the health benefits of it. If we do it that way, here's the health benefits." That's not currently happening. So I find that really exciting.  Well, Jeff, we've reached the end of another episode of The ThinkEnergy podcast, last question for you. How can our listeners learn more about you and Zibi? How can they better connect? So, you know, we've been talking mostly about the Zibi project, which is one of the many things I do you know, if you go to Zibi.ca, then you can find more about Zibi and if you look to hello@zibi.ca anybody that wants to connect they're very good at getting people to me. I'm not much of a social media person, I do have a LinkedIn profile. I don't use it very often. But you can find me on LinkedIn and I'm good at responding to messages there as well. Dan Seguin  32:09 Again, thank you so much for joining me today. I hope you have a lot of fun. Jeff Westeinde  32:13 Well, this was fun, Dan, and thank you for your interest in Zibi and one planet. That's fantastic. Dan Seguin  32:20 Thank you for joining us today. I truly hope you enjoyed this episode of The ThinkEnergy podcast. For past episodes, make sure you visit our website HydroOttawa.com/podcast. Lastly, if you found value in this podcast, be sure to subscribe. Cheers, everyone.

---Join us for our Summer Rewind series as we feature past podcast episodes!--- EPISODE #24: With a nation-wide commitment to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050 as well as an increase in climate change awareness, has eco-purchasing in Canada increased? In other words, are more people buying products and services that have less impact on the environment and human health? Dianna Miller, Chief of ENERGY STAR shares about the ENERGY STAR program and how it works to not only motivate the production of energy-conscious products, but also to help homeowners and businesses make energy-conscious buying decisions.  Related Content & Links:       www.energystar.gov Transcript:  Dan Seguin  00:00 Hey everyone. Welcome to the summer rewind edition of the think energy podcast. While we recharge our batteries during these lazy hazy Days of Summer, we're bringing back some blast from our podcast past, we'll be reintroducing some of the most popular interviews that garnered a lot of attention and interest, perhaps not a coincidence. But they're all focused on the future of the energy sector with themes like renewable energy, green innovation, and being eco conscious. So I hope you truly enjoy our summer rewind edition. In the meantime, have a happy summer. And we'll be back September 6 to kick off another exciting season of the think energy podcast. I'm Dan Sega from hydro Ottawa, and I'll be hosting the think energy podcast. So here's today's big question. Are you looking to better understand the fast changing world of energy? Join me every two weeks and get a unique perspective from industry leaders, as we deep dive and discuss some of the coolest trends, emerging technologies, and latest innovations that drive the energy sector. So stay tuned. as we explore some traditional and some quirky facets of this industry. This is the think energy podcast. Hey, everyone, welcome to another episode of The think energy podcast. The demand for green buildings, electric vehicles, and renewable generation is changing the way we think about and use energy. So much, so it influences what we purchase. The demand is a result of the rising concern for climate change, which is creating a new reality for our planet, but also a new reality for brands and consumers. Consumers want clean technology solutions, sustainability, less pollution. And they want brands that are just as concerned about the environment as they are. More and more consumers want to do business with companies that are environmentally conscious. And they're using their wallet to send that message loud and clear. Now, chances are you likely know the ENERGY STAR brand, its logo has become the trusted symbol for energy efficiency products, particularly in the home appliance space. But did you know the ENERGY STAR certification extends to homes, buildings and industrial plants in the US alone, ENERGY STAR and its partners have reduced greenhouse gas emissions by 3 billion metric tons since 1992. That's equivalent to an annual emission of over 600 million cars. And talk about brand recognition. In its recent survey, more than 90% of US households recognize the ENERGY STAR logo. So let's begin with today's big question. With an increase in climate change awareness. Has environmental purchasing increased meaning are more people buying products and services that have less impact on the environment and human health. Joining us today I have from the Office of Energy efficiency. Diana Miller, Chief of Energy Star. Welcome, Diana. Thanks. Thanks for having me. Maybe you can start by providing our listeners with a quick overview of what it is that you do. And what is the Energy Star program.   Dianna Miller  03:49 So ENERGY STAR is a program that was created by the United States Environmental Protection Agency in Canada actually has administered it since 2001, via an agreement at its core ENERGY STAR is a binary label. So the presence of an ENERGY STAR label on a product or a new home an existing building or an industrial facility just designates that entity as energy efficient. So ENERGY STAR is basically a program where we do all of the work, we do the research and the homework and we kind of crunch all the numbers and come up with a really good way to show that a product is efficient. And then our stakeholders, our partners go out and certify those things products, homes, buildings and industrial facilities to those standards. And then they slap a label on it and it makes it really, really easy then for consumers and citizens to go and find the most energy efficient thing really quickly and reliably. So that's what the program is. And what I do, I have actually two functions. So I'm the brand manager for energy star in Canada so I just kind of help promote the brand and protect brand integrity. On behalf of the Government of Canada, I also administer the Energy Star program for products. So like I said before, we certify a lot of different things, including products, there's about 80 different product types that we certify. And so I also manage the products program element.   Dan Seguin  05:15 Very cool. That's where we connect is my job here is to preserve, protect and promote the brands. Right, so Okay. What is the role of the Energy Star program to achieve Canada's net zero emission future by 2050? And to build a net zero emissions economy? How important is it to expand the numbers of retrofits in a year? Last part of it? Lastly, how does the program help the environment?   Dianna Miller  05:45 Well, to start with the role of Energy Star, and achieving a net zero economy is, again, I'm going to go back to the simplicity of the Energy Star program. So ENERGY STAR is something that I think every Canadian has seen 80% of Canadians recognize and understand it. So ENERGY STAR is a really easy, accessible way for Canadians to take action on a day to day basis. And every tiny incremental action, whether it's buying a light bulb, a fridge, a heating system, a certified home or leasing space, in a certified office building, all of those tiny incremental actions add up to really, really big energy savings. So I want to talk about how the Energy Star program helps the environment, one of the key things that ENERGY STAR achieves is just doing the same amount of work, or performing the same functions using less energy. And whether you're looking at energy that's, you know, generated by coal, whether you're looking at Burning gas, or fossil fuels, or even clean energy like hydro energy, using less energy just means that that energy that you're not using can be used for other things. In Canada, while we do have a lot of very, very clean hydro energy, using too much of it during peak hours means that then all of a sudden, you've got not clean energy that has to kick in. And so if you use less of it, then you're not having to switch over to the not clean energy.   Dan Seguin  07:22 Yeah, I think we're gonna have to set ourselves up, though. Because on that storage will come into play. When we're talking about solar, when we're talking about wind, those will be two big players. And but to make those more efficient, you'll need the storage component to work with that also.   Dianna Miller  07:40 Oh, absolutely. You know, the other thing that I just like to point out is that ENERGY STAR isn't just about using less energy, I mean, it's definitely the key element of the program. So it's an Energy Efficiency Program. And using less energy potentially has has the role of less fossil fuel emissions. However, I think the other thing that we have to look at is ENERGY STAR wades into water territory. So the United States government administers a WaterSense program. And so when you're taking a look at the amount of water that a washer uses, or a dishwasher, ENERGY STAR really tries to cut back on those as well. You can also look at electronics and how they're trying to use less rare earth metals and trying to look at recyclability and things like that. So ENERGY STAR is about more than just energy use. It's definitely the primary function of the program. But definitely, we're looking at other things, even in terms of the controllability of a product. So if a product is connectable to, to the internet, then you know, you can control the product so that it's using less energy at a time where maybe there's dirty energy generation. So being able to connect to a product as a consumer or even as a utility, you know, you can reduce the amount of energy that a product is using when you're using fossil fuel generation.   Dan Seguin  08:59 Well, I just actually subscribed to Hydro Quebec through Hilo program, which is basically them setting up sensors all around the house, where they can actually go on a day where there's a bitter cold, and they will actually just via an email, send me send me a notification that they will bring down the temperature at home and am I okay with that? And then they incentivize you to do more.   Dianna Miller  09:26 That's right. And ENERGY STAR has built in principles of connectivity into a lot of their different product categories. They're moving in that direction with what they call the Smart Home Energy Management System, where they're, you know, working with service providers and utilities as well as manufacturers to kind of come up with an ideal scenario where a home can be more easily controlled and use less energy, especially at marginal periods where you know, you're worried about that fossil fuel energy generation,   Dan Seguin  09:53 what level of influence does the Energy Star label have on the purchasing decision of consumers   Dianna Miller  10:00 Over the last few years, ENERGY STAR Canada has. We do Public Opinion Research. I'll say that so every couple of years we put out a national survey, we try to figure out, you know, how aware Canadians are of the ENERGY STAR symbol of the program, if they understand what it means and that kind of thing. And one of the things that we started asking is, for people who have actually purchased an ENERGY STAR certified product or home, did that symbol affect that purchase decision? And overwhelmingly, the answer is, yes. So out of people that have purchased ENERGY STAR certified things in Canada in 2018, I think there was about 75% said it's because, or maybe not uniquely, because but definitely the symbol played a role that certification work.   Dan Seguin  10:45 Absolutely. Like you just look at Windows as an example.   Dianna Miller  10:48 Oh, yeah. I mean, that's a really big one, especially in a lot of the country. Now, ENERGY STAR certified windows are incented by different provincial or utility incentive programs. Because we know that they perform better. And, you know, people go into a store, that's not even the symbol influences them. It's, you know, just the knowledge that they're better people go into a store and ask for them by name. So yeah,   Dan Seguin  11:15 how does the energuide program fit into this equation?   Dianna Miller  11:20 inner guide and ENERGY STAR complimentary programs. So now, just as a caveat, energuide is a symbol that or a rating program that exists also for vehicle labels, Soviet vehicle fuel consumption, as well as home energy consumption. So I'm speaking specifically about the integrated label on products. But the great thing about the Energuide label is, like I said, it complements the Energy Star label in that it's not a binary label. So where ENERGY STAR either is there or isn't there on major appliances in room air conditioners in Canada, it's required by law, so it's always there. And what it does is it tells you how that product that you're looking at performs among all of the products that exist in Canada. So you know that that there's a scale on it. And it's going to say the best performing product and the worst performing product, and there's an arrow that's going to tell you where the product that you're looking at right now, is in terms of everything else. Now, if it's an ENERGY STAR certified product, what's cool is that you're going to see an ENERGY STAR symbol on that label. So that you know that okay, the product is ENERGY STAR certified. Okay, and it performs here, I could perhaps be getting something even better than this. So I mean, if you're looking for the absolute best efficiency, you know, that energuide label is going to help push you even further than, you know, basic ENERGY STAR levels. So it's kind of cool. It's also going to kind of give you an idea of like I said, were in a product in a product class that product performs so that you know, you know how much room you have to move, you have a general idea of maybe the energy savings that could be achieved, and therefore your bills savings that could be achieved by moving to a more efficient product.   Dan Seguin  13:05 We're seeing a trend where the residential real estate industry is moving towards multi tenant construction. In Canada, two out of three homes built today are multifamily. And in Ontario alone, nearly 700,000 households live in condos. Does this present a challenge or an opportunity for the Energy Star program?   Dianna Miller  13:31 I think for those of us that work in energy efficiency, everything is an opportunity. So absolutely, I mean, I see it as an as an opportunity for the Energy Star program. In fact, ENERGY STAR launched a pilot program a couple of years ago in Canada, to address this very phenomenon that, you know, multifamily buildings are really where we're moving. I mean, high density housing is good for everybody. But that's going to require much better construction practices. And that's where ENERGY STAR comes in, you know, ENERGY STAR for multifamily buildings means that the that structure is going to perform 15% better in terms of efficiency than a building built to code. And again, you know, as code moves, that level moves as well. So, I mean, for a consumer again, quick and easy, right, you're looking at a building that's got that symbol on it, you know that you're going to be moving into unit in a building where your bills are going to be lower. So it's a no brainer for consumers. So we're really hoping that this this program takes off and and shows, you know, successful numbers. I think it's super great program for builders, and I'm really hoping that builders kind of catch the energy star bug and start signing on to this program, because it's consumers are looking for that right now. Consumers are looking for better options and they don't have it in that area right now. That's why ENERGY STAR has moved into that field. So a successful pilot means that we can move that program out into the rest of the country. And so that right now, like I said, it's localized in Ontario, and we really want to see it everywhere.   Dan Seguin  15:09 Is that something along the lines of what I think it was Quebec had no Volk, novo Kima is along that line.   Dianna Miller  15:16 So I think the Quebec program was more associated with I don't know that it was for new construction. So the thing with energy stars were we've created a, like a specification, I guess. So we're creating a standard that builders can use. And so it's kind of like a blueprint in a way. And that's why it's, I mean, I like to emphasize ENERGY STAR for new homes ENERGY STAR for multifamily buildings, it's a program that's just as much for for builders as it is for consumers. Because it's giving builders an affordable, easy way, a reliable way to build energy efficient structures, things that consumers want, and there's a huge demand for it. So and then, not only that, but ENERGY STAR sells, right, everybody knows what it means.   Dan Seguin  16:05 Okay, now, we are seeing more and more cities or municipalities looking for ways to reduce costs and emissions. What makes ENERGY STAR certified buildings special?   Dianna Miller  16:18 Well, I want to go back to the foundation for Energy Star certified buildings. First, if I may, the idea of certifying a building as ENERGY STAR comes first from being able to measure the energy consumption of that building reliably. And so we have the ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager building benchmarking tool. And that's a mouthful. In Canada, I'll try not to say it, I'm going to shorten to the term Portfolio Manager   Dan Seguin  16:46 At least you didn't use an acronym.   Dianna Miller  16:48 That's true. Yeah, that's government, people tend to do that a lot. But Portfolio Manager really rocks, like, I have to say, you know, we brought it into Canada, we created unique Canadian archetypes, for different building types. So you can right now I'll use school boards as an example. Because I mean, seriously, it's, it's just, it's great. So you've got like 600 schools or something like that, and, and between your best performing school and your worst performing school, if you're not really benchmarking the energy consumption of those schools, and they could all be built exactly at the same time by exactly the same builder and they're all performing differently, you're not going to know that unless you're actually measuring the energy use. So I have to say, that's the first step. And and governments are just as interested with Portfolio Manager as they are with ENERGY STAR certification. And in fact, all across Canada and the US, Portfolio Manager ratings are becoming mandatory. So that's a very, very important first step. And then of course, the next step is once you've started measuring your energy consumption, you can start making reliable improvements, you can start understanding how changing this or that or improving this or that it's going to affect your bottom line affect your score. And, of course, yes, shoot for the moon, you know, ENERGY STAR certified buildings are the top 25% in their class. And so, you know, you've got those 600 schools, and you've got a couple that are really performing well. Yeah, you know, making a few improvements can push them up into the top 25 percentile. And then the next thing you know, you've got a certified building. And that's, that's awesome. When you're looking at office space, particularly commercial buildings, those actually sell better, you know, and they're worth more. And so for property owners and managers, it's a really big deal. But for governments, I have to say I go back to portfolio manager and you know, just having a reliable rating, a reliable score, where you can compare one building to another is good for just about everybody.   Dan Seguin  18:52 Okay, Energy Star is a trusted brand that requires staying top of mind. We also know that brand health is increasingly being dictated through social media and digital channels. How do you manage brand consistency in an increasingly digital world that includes the influence of public sentiment and opinion? What can companies learn from ENERGY STAR?   Dianna Miller  19:20 Well, I'll start with brand health and and for me, that equates to brand integrity. I'm really lucky and that ENERGY STAR Canada is one country in a kind of an international network of Energy Star programs owned and managed by the United States Environmental Protection Agency. So we're one element that said, you know, we are I am in charge of the integrity of the brand in in Canada. One thing that we do is we're very strict with how ENERGY STAR symbols can be used. So the US government has trademarked the symbol and all of the terms here in Canada. So right They're I think that's a huge, huge deal. And then we have, for example, a brand book, we have rules associated with how you can use those symbols in those terms. And as you know, Energy Star is a program where we sign partners onto the program and those partners when they're signing as partners in the program, can you define a partner? Sure. So an ENERGY STAR partner in Canada, we call them participants. It can be a manufacturer of a product that's certified as ENERGY STAR, it could be retailers of products that are certified, it could be home builders that build ENERGY STAR certified homes. Most utilities in Canada are ENERGY STAR participants. There are social housing organizations that are ENERGY STAR participants in Canada. And we're looking to the future where we can also sign on commercial building owners and operators, perhaps is ENERGY STAR partners. So an ENERGY STAR participant in Canada is someone who signs an agreement to promote the ENERGY STAR brand, and adhere to brand rules. And there's a number of other things that they do. But it's basically a collaborative agreement where, you know, we do a little bit and they do a little bit, and we all agree that the brand is first and foremost, the most important. So like I said, we have a brand book, we have the participant agreements. The other thing that we'd like to do is provide ready made promotional material that partners and participants can use to promote the brand. So that, you know, the brand is already used appropriately.   Dan Seguin  21:35 So common look and feel   Dianna Miller  21:36 exactly. And then we have you know, I mean, from, from my perspective, we also have a lot of product related brand integrity action. So you know, I'm going to go and I'm going to surf websites to see whether or not somebody is marketing ENERGY STAR certified lawn mowers, right. Because just so you know, we don't certify those. And, you know, I'm gonna go and take a look at whether or not our partners are using the symbols appropriately. So brand integrity is really, really important when you're talking about social media. The other thing is, like I said, you know, we, because we have partners, we depend on our partners to promote the brand just as much as we do. And again, that's providing you know, basic material, like the brand book, to help them understand how they can and can't use the brand, ready made promotional material that they can use so they can engage with us. So I think that goes a long way, and just being consistent. And I think that that's what really helps with consumer awareness and understanding, you know, we haven't changed a lot over the years, the symbol has been the symbol for just about ever.   Dan Seguin  22:38 How do you leverage technologies like video chat bots, to secure that stakeholder engagement?   Dianna Miller  22:47 Not well, yet. Okay, um, you know, we're government, we, we managed to get our energy star, unique ENERGY STAR accounts, about five years ago. So since then, we've been learning, you know, it's been a learning curve. For us, we're now at the point where I think we're pretty mature in our use of Facebook and Twitter, we're learning how to do a few cooler things, you know, we like to throw in animated GIFs. And we like to see what kind of healthy memes we can use to kind of shake things up a little bit. We also know our audience. Um, I think, you know, looking to the future, were trying to find ways to integrate better video, more video, more engaging video, you know, not just the same old, same old, we do shake up our content a little bit. And so that does help. But in terms of onboarding new things, and new technologies, I think the best thing that we can do right now is optimize what we have and and gradually move towards that. But right now, the again, we're government, so we can't really be the first early adopters. But we try not to stay too far behind the pack.   Dan Seguin  24:01 You're on Twitter, what platforms are you on?   Dianna Miller  24:03 so right now we have a French and English, Facebook, French and English Twitter. And in the very near future, we're going to be launching a LinkedIn showcase page under the Natural Resources Canada LinkedIn page. We do use occasionally Instagram, but it's via the Natural Resources Canada Instagram accounts. So energystar Canada doesn't have its own account yet. And we don't have a whole lot of video. So we don't, we don't really do anything via YouTube. But we do have a blog. And it's not an ENERGY STAR candidate blog. It's actually an energy efficiency blog, but I'd say majority of the content has a lot to do with Energy Star.   Dan Seguin  24:43 Okay, now we're going old school with rapid fire questions. Are you ready, sir? Okay. What's your biggest challenge?   Dianna Miller  24:53 professionally, HR. It's hard to it's hard to quickly hire qualified people.   Dan Seguin  24:59 Okay. What makes your brand unique? big sigh?   Dianna Miller  25:08 Um, well, there's a lot of unique things. I mean, you know, energy store is a consumer focused brand. So we're really, really targeting people who are consumers, but it's owned by the government. That's kind of weird in and of itself, I find that that's a very unique aspect. And when that makes it challenging to manage,   Dan Seguin  25:23 what's your department's greatest accomplishment?   Dianna Miller  25:25 Okay, I'm gonna go old school on this one. Okay. I think the greatest accomplishment was back in the 1800s, when we were the geological survey of Canada. I think it's absolutely amazing that the people that worked for the department, then were able to, without satellites, map the topography of what was then Canada, I think it's super cool, what, you know, what they were able to accomplish. And in fact, my younger son was named after Sir William Logan. Okay. And not the x men? No, no, although, you know, he likes to think he was and I just let him. Okay. How do you measure success for your programs? So, um, when I first came to the Office of Energy efficiency, what drew me to it was the fact that at the time, we were running a building retrofit program, and account managers were measured on the petajoules. So pedajoule, being a fuel agnostic measure of energy consumption. So if you were to, you know, sign on, you know, a series of buildings to undertake energy efficiency retrofits, you know, and they could achieve X number of pedajoules of energy savings, that was a pretty big deal. And I still go back to that, I have to say, you know, Energy Star is responsible ENERGY STAR for products is responsible for, you know, between four and a half and five pedajoules of energy savings in Canada per year. I, that's pretty amazing. You know, and I still go back to that.   Dan Seguin  26:57 Okay, very good. Thanks. How do you balance traditional versus social media? What are some of the successful techniques, you guys developed to boost engagement on social media and increase organic, non paid engagement.   Dianna Miller  27:13 So we still do a lot of old school. Partly because ENERGY STAR has a couple of very different audiences, like I said, we're a consumer program. But you know, one of our biggest audiences is our partners, right? Okay. without, without the manufacturers that make these products and design these products without the retailers that sell them, and the utilities that help us push them, you know, we're nothing, they're the ones that actually do the bulk of the work. And so that means that I want to make sure that I'm reaching them. And so we do a lot of traditional work with, you know, just email blasts, picking up the phone and calling them, you know, webinars like, we really do try to work with our partners to make sure that they've got what they need to do great promotions and to push the brand. And then when I look at my consumer focus, absolutely, you know, that's where we try to move into the social media space and be a little bit more innovative. And I think, depending on the audience, our techniques are a little bit different. So one of the techniques that we like when it comes to and just so you know, all of our advertising or all of our engagement is non paid. advertising, advertising is kind of not really possible for us. So you know, everything is organic, one of the things that we'd like to do is, like I said, work with our partners, so our partners get a heads up every week as to what kind of social media activity we're anticipating. We give them heads up well in advance if we're doing major promotions. To give you a great example, we have a promotion that we've done in the last couple of years, called the 12 days of Energy Star. And so leading up to Christmas, probably two or three months away from Christmas, we reach out to our partners and say, Hey, you got anything you want to give away? You know, we'll facilitate that for you. If you want to give something away to consumers. We've got this great, you know, promotion, where consumers can just kind of follow us and like and share, you already have all the eyeballs. That's right. And then and then it's just drawing more attention to our partners, ENERGY STAR certified products. It's a great win for consumers, they're learning something about those products, and then you have an opportunity to win them. So I mean, our followership really increases during that time period. I mean, in terms of our engagement, it's, it blasts just about every record out of the water, in terms of engagement with government, social media, I mean, you know, you got to put the bar where it belongs. But that said, you know, it's it, I think, little tiny things like that, that are that are innovative, kind of get attention of consumers, they kind of keep them on their toes a little bit. And it also is a really great one for our partners because they like to engage with us. It really it Kind of leverages what they're already doing. And so they can amplify our message and vice versa.   Dan Seguin  30:09 How about sharing some simple tips or strategies for our listeners, so they can maybe foster greater I'll say online awareness, but also to keep their audiences engaged? if it's it could be digital, but how do you how do you make that? How would what would you share?   Dianna Miller  30:26 So one of the things that we like to do? First of all, we were super realistic about what we can and can't do, right? So we know what our limits are. And we also know who our audiences are. So I mean, you know, I'm not, I'm not probably going to try and reach the 15 year olds, right, or I know who is already going to be interested in Energy Star. I also know that, you know, the greenies the people that are super, super sold on Energy Star, they might be more likely to amplify what we're doing. But I don't know that I'm going to change their behavior, because it's kind of already what we want. So really being serious about who our audience is, and isn't, is also helpful, because I'm not trying to cast a really, really wide net. And staying true to the brand. So, you know, we know what ENERGY STAR is and what it means we know what the look and feel of energy star is, we know that it has to be accessible, we know that it has to be wholesome, it has to be helpful. So just kind of really sticking to that type of look and feel for the brand. But then shaking things up a little bit. So because we know who our audience is, you know, we're happy to throw in a few cat memes, or great or, you know, dogs in a dishwasher or whatever, like I, you know, it's we do want to be a little bit fun, we can't really be edgy, but that doesn't, that doesn't keep us from, you know, making people smile, being a little bit silly sometimes. So, you know, throwing a wrench in the gears as we can being government. But the other thing, like I said, and I and I keep going back to this, because it's so so, so important. We really do rely on partners and partnerships and engagement with like minded organizations and individuals. We're looking at a pilot right now where we're going to start working with influencers. So like minded individuals that you know, feel that energy efficiency is important for Canada and are willing to amplify our message. Because it means something to them. And so, you know, we're looking to maybe be a little bit more innovative and a little bit more creative. But our bread and butter is really knowing who our audiences and what they want from us. Energy Star sells itself in that it already puts money back into people's pockets. It's already recognized by governments and utilities. And so it's, it's, you know, the subject of a lot of incentive programs and rebates. So that in and of itself draws a lot of eyeballs. And then what we do is just okay, we know that people are there to save money. Great. So here's some more tips. Here's other things you can do.   Dan Seguin  32:59 Good. I I'm assuming that you travel a lot within within your job, sometimes. Yeah. If you had to book some, some time on a plane, and you would be in a position to select your dream seatmate. who would it be and why?   Dianna Miller  33:19 Okay, this is gonna be a really boring answer. It would be somebody who falls asleep just like I do. I mean, seriously, like, if my flight is over three hours. I like to have a window seat. I stick my head on the bulkhead, and I and I literally, I just, I put in earplugs. I do, like, I'm so boring. I was   Dan Seguin  33:37 not expecting this. Yeah. Okay. Okay, I hope you enjoyed the old school rapid fire we had a few seconds ago. I'll give it a shot again. All right, with a few more Beatles or Drake, Drake. Cats or dogs? Definitely dogs, scotch or wine? Neither. Okay. Yoga, or CrossFit. I don't exercise.   Dianna Miller  33:58 Okay.   Dan Seguin  34:01 I'm allergic. Okay, Diana, we've reached the end of the podcast. So thank you so much for joining us today. If someone wanted to reach out and connect, how would they do it?   Dianna Miller  34:12 My best advice is to go and I'm not just saying this to brush people off either. It's to go to to go to one of our social media accounts and inbox us or to go to energy startup dc.ca and contact us that way. And the reason being because there's somebody on my case to answer them because somebody actually manages the cap, and they can make sure that I get back to people.   Dan Seguin  34:34 Okay, okay, good. That's fair. And in closing, folks, from homeowners to small businesses, right through industrial buildings, programs are available to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and to help protect our planet tomorrow. And for the future. Check out the ENERGY STAR website. I will have the link on the show notes. Again, thank you very much for joining us today. Thank you for joining us today. I truly hope you enjoyed this episode of The thinkenergy podcast. For past episodes, make sure you visit our website hydroottawa.com/podcast. Lastly, if you found value in this podcast Be sure to subscribe. Anyway, this podcast is a wrap. Cheers, everyone.

---Join us for our Summer Rewind series as we feature past podcast episodes!--- EPISODE #33: Compared to conventional methods of energy generation, like fossil fuels, greenhouse gases emitted from renewables are little-to-none; making them the cleanest, most viable solution to prevent environmental degradation. In this episode, we invite Brandy Giannetta, Senior Director at Canadian Renewable Energy Association, to discuss renewable energy and the realistic strategies for increasing its supply to permanently replace the remaining carbon-intensive energy sources in Canada. Related Content & Links: https://hydroottawa.com/ Websites: Canadian Renewable Energy Association https://renewablesassociation.ca/ Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brandy-giannetta-45872539/ Transcript: Dan Seguin  00:02 Hey, everyone. I'm Dan Seguin from hydro Ottawa. And I'll be hosting the think energy podcast. Are you looking to better understand the fast changing world of energy? Join me every two weeks and get a unique perspective from industry leaders as we deep dive and discuss some of the coolest trends, emerging technologies, and latest innovations that drive the energy sector. So stay tuned as we explore some traditional and some quirky facets of this industry.  Hey, everyone, welcome back. This is the ThinkEnergy podcast. We've all heard the saying 'it's not easy being green'. But when it comes through renewable generation, is that true? With all the scientific evidence out there, being a climate change denier is becoming more and more synonymous with being a flat-earther. It's clear that humans have been polluting our atmosphere with carbon dioxide and other global warming emissions. NASA, the World Health Organization and the United Nations say we have to change the way we live, work and play. As we face our own extinction, what is the answer? Do we have the courage to be green? Are we okay with it not being easy. That brings us to renewable energy. How easy or difficult is it? How does it improve our health, environment and economy? Where is Canada at? And are we on track to becoming a global climate leader? Are we leveraging renewable energy within the electricity system. And do we have enough new renewable capacity to power our energy needs compared to conventional methods of generation like fossil fuels, greenhouse gases emitted from renewables our little to none, making them the cleanest, most viable solution to prevent environmental degradation. Renewable sources of electricity have powered Canada for more than a century. According to Natural Resources Canada, renewable energy sources currently provide about 17% of Canada's total primary energy supply, with wind and solar as the fastest growing in the country. So here's today's big question. What is a realistic strategy to increasing the supply of renewable energy so that we can permanently replace the remaining carbon intensive energy sources in Canada. And what would the global impact be? Joining me today is Brandy Giannetta. From the Canadian Renewable Energy Association, Brandy is a regional director responsible for promoting, communicating and advocating for adoption of the associations policies, with political representatives, members of government, media, and other key stakeholders and decision makers. Brandy, welcome to the show. Maybe start us off by talking about the Canadian Renewable Energy Association. its mandate and why it's important for Canada. Brandy Giannetta  03:46 Sure thing! Well the Canadian Renewable Energy Association: We are a national Industry Association is we we see ourselves as the voice for wind energy, solar energy and energy storage solutions, here in Canada with the goal of powering Canada's energy future. So our association really works to create the conditions for modern energy solutions vis-à-vis stakeholder advocacy, public engagement at several different levels. So we are a multi Technology Industry Association and we are new. We are looking again to provide that unified voice for renewable energy as well as energy storage across Canada. So we're the product of uniting what was the Canadian Wind Energy Association with what was the Canadian solar industry association so CANWEA and CANSIA our well-known names as having had decades of advocacy in Canada on behalf of the wind sector in the solar sector in Canada. And now we're one new expanded Industry Association, so very exciting, which also now includes, of course, energy storage. So that's in recognition of that pivotal role that energy storage is going to play alongside those renewable technologies as we look to transform Canada's energy mix. Dan Seguin  04:59 What is the Canadian Renewable Energy Association's role in transforming Canada's energy mix? Brandy Giannetta  05:08 Right? So Well, our new joint venture as one's association is really going to enable our members as well as the association itself to secure what we think is going to be a larger piece of the fat future energy pie that could normally have been achieved as single technologies or single entities. So our technologies having common interests in common characteristics will with respect to that policy, energy policy, you know, climate policy, different markets and regulatory frameworks throughout Canada, and really advocating within those commonalities to support the deployment of all of the technologies or solutions. So I didn't mention in the front that we have over 300 members within our association that represent that full scope of the sector. So we're really uniquely positioned to do that as an industry association, but I see some really sort of specific aspects of how we will do that. In what our strategy will entail. And I alluded to a little bit around the advocacy side, providing access to credible and timely information, and industry engagement. So that's an internal process, as well as an F front facing sort of public facing engagement role that will play. So as a national Industry Association, as I mentioned, we will be active at the federal level from an advocacy perspective, but will we're also present in multiple jurisdictions across Canada. So we advocate for policies that focus on that transition to a clean economy, but it's powered by renewable energy solutions. So that's really the key there. What are what are one of the things we'll be working toward is to create new opportunities, but also to remove the existing barriers that are stopping us from realizing those, those solutions and ultimately, that will enhance the deployment of our technologies throughout the country, and what we really consider to be safe and sustainable, environmentally friendly manner, but also a big part of that advocacy side and credible information and front facing side of what we do will be to increase public awareness of our technologies as they stand. But also, most importantly, the benefits that they provide that they're already providing to communities throughout Canada. And across the future, the potential to do even more. So federally, we have, you know, number one priority is to make sure that we're well positioned to contribute to economic recovery, particularly in a COVID situation that we're in right now. But also as a unified voice for the renewable side and energy storage, we're going to really try to help navigate Canada to an emissions reduction targets, we're going to create good jobs, we're going to stimulate the economy, you know, we're going to be present in urban centers and rural centers and indigenous communities. So we have so much value to offer. And as a collective effort, we're really going to try to influence those public policies that are really energy focused and economic stimulus focus to be able to do that. And we can do it because they'll probably say this a lot. We're a really scalable set of resources and when you put us all together, we're really well suited to power that transition. Dan Seguin  08:03 How is your association positioned to deliver clean, low cost, reliable, flexible, and scalable solutions for Canada's energy needs? Brandy Giannetta  08:14 Well, I'm glad you said it first, because I think I'll be repeating myself a lot, because that's the key. We're low cost, we're reliable. You know, we offer flexible, scalable solutions. So we have a headquarters in Ottawa, we're nationally, you know, present. But we also have people in the key regions across Canada from east to west and centrally and connect in Toronto. And we definitely look to influence regionally regional policies as well as national policies. And we definitely have a public facing communication side where we're advocating for energy solutions that will leverage the value proposition that renewables and energy storage provide together. So we're going to have what I talked about a little earlier with that internal forum for dialogue for our members that enables us to really collaborate provided opportunities for the stewardship of our technologies but also the growth of the industry across Canada and Canadian economies. So renewable energy and energy storage, as I noted, have a really important and central role to play as we transform our Canadian energy mix. And we see electricity markets adapting to these transformational demands to not only decarbonize, but as a result, electrify new sectors with clean electricity resources. So that reality has really been a huge driver in that tremendous new market opportunity for renewable energy and energy storage together. As we sort of get more comfortable with what that transition looks like and what it entails, our electricity system here in Canada is really going to need increased, actually, I would say significantly increased amounts of renewable energy, energy storage and at the utility scale. So our grids need to be powered by clean supply of renewables backed up by energy storage, and we need to make sure that they remain affordable, reliable, flexible, and scalable, as you noted, so that's going to mean, you know, large utility scale deployment of renewables and energy storage, but also a significant uptake and sort of mobilization of those behind the meter application. So distributed energy resources, for example. And putting that new collaborative framework in place like we've done at our association, is going to fully be able to allow us to fully leverage that opportunity. Dan Seguin  10:23 Let me ask you this. Is the renewable energy industry primed to enter a new phase of growth driven largely by increasing customer demand and cost competitiveness? Are you seeing a culture shift? Brandy Giannetta  10:38 Definitely, yes, there has been and it's, it's, I would say, Now more than ever, that we are realizing that culture shift and we're starting to see things materialize as a result of that shift. So ultimately, the needs and the wants of Canadian consumers have evolved but they're continuing to evolve. So you know, energy technologies: these aren't the only thing. It's markets that are innovating. The costs are coming down, as we all know, to a significantly affordable level. Business models as a result are also changing, not just here in Canada, but globally. So it's a global trend. It's not unique to Canada, we are well poised to follow those global trends and capitalize on the learnings and advancements of technology as well as the market and business structures that have evolved as well. So renewable energy and energy storage as solutions. Focused approaches are really increasingly contributing to those electricity grids and energy systems at a large scale, which in that what that means is that we're enhancing the reliability aspect and offerings, the flexibility of the technologies. And because we're super scalable, as I told you, I'll talk about that a lot, because it's certainly an attractive aspect of the advocacy side. The scalability of our energy production and use in Canada and abroad is really a factor there because we can do it at whatever scale needed for whatever system You know, is being sought. So a consciousness about the environment continues to grow alongside that. So we got energy policy and economic stimulus, but we also have environmental policy and the drivers for decarbonisation, and electrification of the sectors that aren't traditionally powered by electricity, like cars and transportation like but a large scale as well as buildings are really increasing the demand for energy solutions that are non-emitting affordable, scalable, flexible, and all of those great things. And that's something that obviously our industries can provide. So our vision really, ultimately is to ensure that renewable energy being solar and wind and energy storage on top of that are playing that central role as we transform the mix so that we can continue to provide those solutions across the board. Dan Seguin  12:43 Randy, do you believe that renewables like wind and solar can help deliver the Clean Power jobs needed for sustainable economic delivery? Brandy Giannetta  12:55 For sure, I mean, the calls for an economic recovery right now that are grind Clean Energy and Climate Action are increasingly growing and becoming more prevalent across the across the globe. We've got the International Energy Agency, for example, who called this a historic opportunity, you know, despite the fact that we're in a global pandemic, and there are many crises to manage. We're taking our cues from the International Energy Agency as a proper agency seeking, you know, recognition that we have an opportunity upon us that is historic and in its nature, the International Monetary Fund as well has its leadership has come out to say that we must do everything within our power to make it a green recovery. So right here in Canada, we in particular, are signatories to a public letter, which has asked Canadian governments to pursue a resilient recovery to the COVID situation in particular. So we've got hundreds of signatories representing over a you know, I think over 2000 now, Canadian companies that are right here, you know, headquarters here in Canada that have signed that letter seeking campaign. In order to pursue federal and provincial governments to commit to a clean recovery and resilience plan, so the the renewable energy sector as well as energy storage industries, we're making a case for those policies, energy policies, economic stimulus, packaging, recovery policies that are, you know, threefold, we need to make sure that they're economically timely and long lasting, so right time, right place, and that they are sustainable, making sure that they're environmentally sound. So there needs to be that environmental sustainability attached to those policies. And then eminently feasible, they have to be practical, realistic and actually implementable with a proven success here in Canada or elsewhere. So that we can capitalize on that and truly, you know, make that history that the International Energy Agency has referred to. So our federal government stimulus and recovery efforts in particular, I think our focus right now for us because we think that those efforts can create jobs, they can spur clean tech innovation. They will encourage economic diversification across many sectors, not just the energy sector, but also ultimately we're going to cut carbon pollution while doing that and why not because that illness causing you know, air pollution is something that we can tackle at the same time while we grow our economy. And really what we're looking to do is make Canada more resilient country, and we want to do it on the back of our energy sector. So we really believe that's important. And we do believe that those initiatives taken in support of economic recovery also allow us to address all those significant other challenges like climate change. So it's really important that we invest in wind energy and solar energy and in energy storage at appropriate scales and in appropriate locations, so that we can deliver the jobs, the economic benefits, making sure that today we're realizing those benefits, and then building out that longer term infrastructure that's sustainable, it's going to provide a really strong foundation for a lot more investment down the road. And again, jobs economic activities going to all spur as we as we build out those little as of tomorrow, Dan Seguin  16:01 so climate adaptation and resilience stand out as rapidly emerging areas of employment as a result of climate change impacts, what types of careers are in demand? And at what rate are jobs in clean energy sector growing? Brandy Giannetta  16:20 That's a great question because you know, the numbers are there. So we know the stats, and we can say it all those figures. And I'll talk a little bit about that. But the jobs are exciting. And there's no limit to the types of jobs one of the greatest stats that I love. And I check it out every year as the annual numbers come out of the US in particular is the wind turbine technicians and solar technicians that has continuously year over year over the past several years, ranked as one of the fastest growing occupations in the United States. So that's really exciting because that resonates here in Canada as well as we build out our industry. In fact, we did a wind energy supply chain study in Alberta, a few years back and it really detailed the breakdown of the jobs required just for a wind farm in particular And it was varied from the very, you know, technical and professional engineering requirements, geotechnical type requirements siting and negotiation of land agreements, and the regulatory advocacy work as well as environmental side of that. There's also, you know, the broader procurement construction side and you know, transportation logistics, you know, setting up a crane and having that that broader service industry attached to the evolution of the sector. So it's really a significant cross section of very technical and professional quality career type positions, research driven things from environmental sustainability, and then the, you know, the heavy lifting of the transportation and construction side of things. So there's a lot of, we're seeing offshoots of service jobs as well. And one of the large one of the aspects of the solar side, especially behind the meter, and that large uptake of solar installations behind the meter has created a lot of opportunities is very labor intensive. And we're seeing from the solar industry, significant numbers on manufacturing, sales, distribution and wholesale careers. We've got the installation community as well across Canada growing at an exponential rate, operations and maintenance will remain a significant portion of a sophisticated workforce. And then as I said, that offshoot service industry that supplies the services to those things. So as you can see, it's not a shortlist of jobs. It is, is a varied and like I said, extensive list of job opportunities that will continue to evolve and grow. Now, if you want to talk about statistics, the rate that it's growing at, we have already over 300,000 people employed in the clean energy sector in Canada. So that number has continued to grow by close to 5% every year, and it's slated to continue to do so which just to give you some perspective is about a third faster than Canada's economy as a whole and its growth rate, which is just under 4%. So by 2030, the projections that we're relying on today show us that there will be over a half a million Canadians employed and gainful full time lucrative careers in the clean energy sector, across the country. And that's going to be, you know, thanks in part to continued commitment to climate policies, to programs that are supporting robust clean economy type stimulus, and that growth rate will continue to evolve as a result. So it's very good news, Dan Seguin  19:21 Brandy, in a world where distributed energy resources are increasingly valued. I'd love to hear your views on both the wind and solar value proposition as compelling options and how customers can more actively manage their demand. Brandy Giannetta  19:39 Right? Well, I have to go back to the old you know, the the reference to scalability, wind energy, solar energy, even energy storage - extremely scalable. What that means, as I as I noted earlier, is that these technologies, you know, they're well positioned to transform our energy system, but they can provide solutions at a micro level or a macro level. So at the micro level, distributed energy resources can be deployed in a number of ways to empower the customers that are seeking those technologies. And then of course, then scaled according to a very unique set of needs as defined by the customers themselves. And they're affordable. So more and more energy customers of all types, as I think I said this already, or they're seeking, you know, clean, affordable, safe, all of those all of those buzzwords and properties and principled approaches to pursuing these technologies as solutions. And ultimately, they're less and less focused on a single technology to provide it. Is it smart? Does it make sense does it fit all those boxes being checked, you know, whether that's wind, solar or storage at the scale that's required. That's really that's the value of that as a solution of these technologies as a solution option, and they're multifaceted. So I think that really there's definitely clear public desire, obviously for clean and affordable as we've noted many times, but those solutions behind the meter, so smaller scale applications, Like rooftop solar panels, personalized home energy storage systems, things like that are going to continue to evolve and provide those solutions at other larger rate. And the innovation behind those distributed energy resources is really what's, you know, allowing us to be poised to meet the demands of today's customers, but we evolve those offerings for the future needs and wants as well. So that transition again, clean, renewable sources, is very important. And the impact for the consumer and ultimately, our economy and environment are what's really driving the value proposition there. Dan Seguin  21:33 As solar and wind power come closest to meeting three key energy consumer priorities—cost-effectiveness, decarbonization, and reliability—what role will they play with microgrids and self-sufficiency? Brandy Giannetta  21:50 Oh, great question. Again, all those buzzwords but important ones right. They're really principled realities and, you know, criteria that we're aiming towards So the successful and enhanced uptake of micro grids and self-sufficiency will be motivated as long as we continue to meet those principles and those criteria. So remember flexible, scalable, and portable. So we've got a micro level, you know, distributed energy resource, and we can deploy it in a number of ways. So I talked a little bit about in the previous question about, you know, based on what the customer's needs and wants are. So, you know, some really, you know, tangible examples of that are converting remote communities that aren't grid connected, so they have no wires and no transmission access. And they've been running on diesel generators for decades for generations really. And we're going to convert those to sustainable micro grids, we're going to use solar panels, we're going to use industrial size storage, whether that's batteries or otherwise, and maybe even a wind turbine or two, if it makes sense. You do it to scale. And now you've got a remote community that's self-generating, you know, non-emitting, and it's quite independent. And that's, that's a success story in and of itself. Distributed energy resources, can really promote increased energy self-sufficiency. And through other examples that are a little simpler even like deployment of rooftop solar in neighborhoods, you know, we're going to use it to heat your house your water instead of the electrical or gas hot water heater, maybe you're using it to heat your pool. So you're not running you know, another gas line or gas system in your urban areas, but also providing electricity more broadly like bigger installations on hospitals and colleges and universities and schools like that municipal buildings, all of those are all you know, fall into the bucket of distributed energy resources which promote self-sufficiency and ultimately, renewable energy powered things like charging stations for electrical vehicles is enhanced. You know, I would say ultimately, self-sufficiency, proper and enhanced reliability go hand in hand because you can couple that with energy efficiency, electric vehicles, charging as well as discharging and smart grids and even certain demand response measures. So the list goes on and on. You know, we can unpack them but though it's quite, I would say quite lucrative. And again, it all comes back to the fact that scales scalability. Dan Seguin  24:09 Brandy, can you help me understand what the role of storage plays in the deployment and advancement of renewable energy? Brandy Giannetta  24:17 Oh, sure. Well, on a larger scale like utility side, the technologies renewables can be deployed in complimentary ways to supply and support our broader electricity grids. Or they can be used as a co-located or hybrid resource with facilities like wind projects, wind farms and solar projects. Adding energy storage in order to firm that utility scale offering of energy to the grid, so firm power, or capacity, if you will, but by working together, the renewables and energy storage present a broader and more diverse range of not just firm energy offerings, but for customer seeking other things that diversity in tech technology provides scale grid services and other products for lack of a better word to the grid operator. And then ultimately, if you're looking at a smaller scale to the customer, as standalone efforts to enhance the needs that they have identified, sometimes that's offsetting their peak demand use and other aspects and applicability of the energy storage component can be used that way. So, the scale varies large scale utility grid offering to smaller scale behind the meter solutions is a really energy storage in particular, as a technology has a central role to play in that in that transformation to be able to make those solutions tangible and affordable and implementable. Dan Seguin  25:48 Now for the million dollar question, how is Canada faring as a global climate leader? In your opinion, what is the low hanging fruit and what has the potential to have the biggest impact to the industry and maybe the world? Brandy Giannetta  26:06 Well, sure, Canada is in a great position already, because we are starting from a spot of having strong renewable and non-emitting electricity base. So there remains also a massive untapped potential for wind, solar and hydro resources to continue to be developed. And so I would say that we're as one of the best countries or countries best position to eliminate our fossil fuel use any electricity generation in particular. And then the abundance of our resources means that we're then also well positioned to support significant increase in non-emitting or renewable electricity supply to power those other fossil fuel intensive industries, like I mentioned earlier transportation and buildings. So we do need to move away from fossil fuels for those other industries as well. And we can do it on the back of the electricity sector in Canada, as it currently stands, but we can also evolve that significantly because we already have the resources. And I think the number is associated with deep decarbonisation and vision that we need to increase our electricity production by two or three times to reach our sort of net zero GHG emission targets. And we already, like I said, have all of those resources available to us to do that. So it's a matter of the will and, you know, transitioning to that, as a global leader, we can really, I think, step ahead of the crowd and shine. Dan Seguin  27:26 What is exciting you about the renewable energy industry right now? Brandy Giannetta  27:33 Well, we're on the right side of history, we always have been but now more than ever, I think the stars are really aligning, you know, we've got decreasing costs, our customer demand and knowledge is growing at a rate. I don't know that any of us could have predicted a few you know, a decade ago, that emissions free zero marginal cost fuel, it's never going to go away. It's here to stay. It's scalable, it's flexible, and it's decentralized. All of those buzzwords, which we can unpack any single one of them. That's exciting. But really put them all together. And I don't know, how exciting is that? Like, I don't know if I'm if I'm making the assumption, but I think it speaks for itself, like we are in a really good place right now, for all those reasons, and we need to be excited about it. Dan Seguin  28:15 Here's my last question, Brandy. What keeps you up at night? Brandy Giannetta  28:21 Well, you know, I think governments across Canada, you know, they need to take the politics out of the energy sector. And the decision making processes really need to be based on fair and transparent competition. You know, we've all, you know, leveling that playing field for us all and taking the politics out of it, because that decision making process really needs to be aimed at providing the best solution to clearly define problems without the politics and that's not to say there's not a role for governments and energy policy. There certainly is, but sound policy, stable investment signals, those things need to outweigh the politics in order to realize that, you know, progress and innovation it's so ripe for the picking. And I think our good friend Geddy Lee, a Canadian icon, says it best when he said "progress has no patience, but something's got to give." So those are the things that I stay up at night thinking about. Dan Seguin  29:11 Brandy, we've reached the end of another episode of the thick energy podcast. How can our listeners learn more about you and your association? How can they connect? Brandy Giannetta  29:23 Well, like I said, we are new. So we've got a brand new shiny website up and running. It's renewablesassociation.ca. We're active on Twitter and LinkedIn, mostly, we've got Facebook and maybe a couple of other social channels. But we're going to continue to be evolving those sites over the summer in both English and French, which is very exciting and very important to us as a national Industry Association to be fully bilingual. So I would say that your best efforts reach out vis-à-vis our website. We're a small but mighty team, and so we're listed there and you can contact us centrally through the website is probably your best bet. Dan Seguin  29:57 Again. Thank you so much for joining me today, I hope you had a lot of fun. Brandy Giannetta  30:02 I sure did. Thank you so much for the opportunity. I really appreciate it. Dan Seguin  30:07 Thank you for joining us today. I truly hope you enjoyed this episode of The ThinkEnergy podcast. For past episodes, make sure you visit our website hydroottawa.com/podcast. Lastly, if you found value in this podcast, be sure to subscribe. Cheers, everyone.

---Join us for our Summer Rewind series as we feature past podcast episodes!--- EPISODE #22: Canada's Electric Highway is now a reality. Petro-Canada recently made a bold move to equip 50 of its retail outlets along the Trans-Canada Highway with electric vehicle fast chargers. This is a great start, but EV owners need a consistent, convenient, reliable and fast means of recharging their vehicles - wherever they travel. Al Cormier, CEO & President of Electric Mobility Canada, shares his take on the future of electric vehicle adoption. Related Content & Links: Electric Mobility Canada: https://emc-mec.ca/ Al Cormier (Linkedin): https://www.linkedin.com/in/al-cormier-22276617a/ --- Transcript: Dan Seguin  00:00 Hey everyone. Welcome to the summer rewind edition of the think energy podcast. While we recharge our batteries during these lazy hazy Days of Summer, we're bringing back some blast from our podcast past, we'll be reintroducing some of the most popular interviews that garnered a lot of attention and interest, perhaps not a coincidence. But they're all focused on the future of the energy sector with themes like renewable energy, green innovation, and being eco conscious. So I hope you truly enjoy our summer rewind edition. In the meantime, have a happy summer. And we'll be back September 6 to kick off another exciting season of the think energy podcast. Hey, everyone, welcome to the think energy podcast. Canada's electric highway is now reality. Petrol Canada recently made a bold move to equip 50 of its retail outlets along the Trans Canada highway with electric vehicle fast chargers. EV owners can now drive from the Rockies to the Maritimes. It's nothing short of monumental for Canadian Evie owners. Cities are also investing in infrastructure to facilitate their citizens transition towards electric vehicles. More and more drivers are choosing EV's or electric vehicles, leaving fossil fuel behind and turning to electricity to power their vehicles. EV owners need a convenient, reliable and fast turnaround in recharging their vehicles. So here's today's big question. Canada's electric highway is a great start. But how do we create a favorable environment for Evie adoption? My guest today on the think energy podcast is Al Cormier, CEO and president of electric mobility Canada, here to talk about barriers and opportunities that exist for the future electrification of our cities. Welcome out. Al, please tell us a bit about your organization. And its mandate.   Al Cormier  02:57 Hey, electric mobility Canada is unique. And that is the only Canadian Industry Association dedicated fully to the promotion of electricity and transportation. I founded it in 2005. And I retired from it in 2011. And I'm back at it again. Because the CEO just retired, they're looking for another person. And so it's a fast growing association of about 200 members coast to coast. We represent people from the industry side that build and electric vehicles, product services, software, etc. People on the electrical utility side like hydro hydro, people are the government side, we have several government agencies, federal, provincial, municipal fleet managers, not for profit organizations, EV societies, these are individuals that support EV. So it's a great group. And everybody in the same tent will be addressed all kinds of issues,   Dan Seguin  04:13 National sales of EV's sit at around 3.5%. What are your recommendations to accelerate the deployment of electric vehicles in Canada?   Al Cormier  04:25 Yeah, 3.5% is the percentage of new light duty vehicles sales that are electric. So there's over 20 million light duty vehicles in Canada. And at the end of the third quarter of 2019. We had about 150,000 electric vehicles in Canada. So it's a long way to go to replace those fee but that's not impossible down the road. So The market shares two and a half percent. But the percentage of sales was great greater in Quebec and British Columbia, which are very supportive programs for electric vehicles. The three and a half percent is a national number. British Columbia was 10%, Quebec was 7%. So you have to look up but those provinces are doing to promote electric vehicle sales. But they both have a federal financial incentive program. For the buyers of EVs, they have programs to install all kinds of EV charging stations or infrastructure, a lot of public awareness programs. They have bylaws at the local level that require homes to be built rarely for EVs provincial regulations mandating the auto sector to sell a percentage of the sales being newbies, so a host of actions that can help the set of market to be in a good condition for the sale of EVs. Now, last March, a federal budget announced a national incentive program for EV buyers that took place in May, was implemented in May last year, at a bump the sales nationally expect the results final results for 2019. And the next week or so. And I expect that the three and a half percent may well be closer to four and a half 5%.   Dan Seguin  06:42 Quick question now. You alluded to light duty vehicles, the category what are the categories are there   Al Cormier  06:51 light duty vehicles, passenger vehicles, pickup trucks, that kind of stuff. Then, of course, we get into commercial trucks, you know, bigger vehicles, different classes of trucks, there's eight classes of trucks. We get into transit buses. We're going into school buses, we get into charter buses. And we get into off road electrification. We have electrification in the Marine side and pleasure boats, and snowmobiles. We have electrification in the farming level agricultural machinery as well. The mining sector particularly helpful in the underground, where the ventilation problems are an issue. So there's electric mobility is spreading out into many, many sectors. We even have an electric airplane in British Columbia.   Dan Seguin  07:47 when can we anticipate to see a shift from major automakers to enhance their EV product lines? Is it starting now?   Al Cormier  07:56 Well, I think it's fair to say that all of them are in the business are setting themselves up for EVs. We have some that are committing to producing only EVs after a few years time. And right now there's over 40 different models available, not always available in every part of Canada. But the auto industry is a complicated business, to introduce a new model is about four or five years cycle time is designed and tested and whatever marketed and so that they line up their productions this year for next year. So if there's a demand for TVs in any part of Canada, it sort of has to wait till the industry is ready. And of course, some people are not patient enough to wait for that. They've been enacting what they call zero emission vehicle mandates. California, Quebec, and British Columbia are saying that we have a supply side problem. And they're requiring the auto industry to produce as electric a certain percentage of the production over time that that percentage increases to 100% by 2040, in some jurisdiction. So they're being pressured by regulators to produce more of these. They're being pressured by the public the water by worries for economic or environmental reasons. And they have a hard job to do to transition their industry so to speak, to meet that demand, but hopefully, they'll catch up the public demand soon. And supplies should not be an issue.   Dan Seguin  09:53 Is there a typical persona to an EV owner in your experience? What Do EV owners care about,   Al Cormier  10:02 I've been watching this now for over 10 years. And I think the early people, early buyers are people that are what we call the early adopters. They like new technologies that want to try it out. And everything else, they'll go to great lengths to make it work. And the next phase of buyers have been those who have been buying it for environmental reasons, because they're getting more and more committed to reducing emissions and transportation, which is not unimportant. At the national level. Transportation contributes about 25% of greenhouse gas emission. And in major cities, it's as high as 40%. So it's a big problem. So then we have the environmentalists have been sort of the next phase, where we're now seeing people buying these for economic reasons, because they save the average user about $2,000 a year in fuel costs. And of course, servicing costs are a lot less because there's a lot less moving parts and ease and require less servicing. So that's attractive as well. So that's sort of the transition. And of course, in the last year, we've seen a lot of public demand for action or climate change a lot of awareness. And I've started to see some TV commercials from auto companies are awarding their electric big. That's good.   Dan Seguin  11:34 I would love to have your thoughts on the following. Getting more EV's on the road is a practical and effective way for Canadians to reduce pollution and fight climate change. But how are we offsetting EV drain on the power grid?   Al Cormier  11:53 That's a frequently asked question. I have participated in evaluation of this topic. In several cities, including yours and Ottawa. whether an organization called pollution probe and Natural Resources Canada, we examine the current capacity of several major cities in Canada. And basically, they can adopt EV growth, you know, with minor adjustments. Obviously, if everybody the same street buys at the same time, they have adjust a transformer at the end of the street and that kind of stuff. But if you look back, I've been around a few decades. You know, we went from clotheslines to house dryers, clothes dryers in the house that it most EVs will be charged at home at the same power level as the clothes dryer. So the utilities survive the transition cost like clothes dryers. Because it didn't happen all at one time. You know, it's a slow period over a few years. And utilities have also survived the demand for air conditioning. Most homes years ago, were not air conditioning. Now they are. So we've adjusted. And I'm confident that utilities will adjust for electric vehicles as well. And I don't see any major technical challenges. It's as minor system upgrade to the   Dan Seguin  13:27 Home charging. Is it a barrier for the first time buyers is mandatory residential Evie chargers for new buildings a potential game changer. In Canada, only cities, towns and municipalities in British Columbia appear to be instituting rules regarding residential chargers.   Al Cormier  13:48 It's a complex arrangement of rules and regulations. We have the National Building Code that recommends that buildings adopt be ready for EVs. And then in most provinces, we have a provincial building code that regulates everything provincially and illicitly. But in BC they have local building codes as well. So what we're saying in British Columbia is that these municipalities again, because of promotion by the government and EV groups and so on have adopted bylaw changes, and amend their code so that a new home being built should be pre wired not pre wired but preset for EVs. That means running the conduit from the electrical panel in the basement to the garage. So it's very inexpensive to do at the time of construction. Go back and do it later. It could be in the 1000s of dollars. Now we propose that for instance to the Ontario government, and it was well on the way to being legislated the change in the internal code last year, the current government listened to the construction industry, who maintained that there was an expensive thing to do, they would add hundreds of dollars to the cost of new home and should not do it. So the Ford government says, okay, we won't require it. So we hope that that will change in time in Ontario, I believe it's required in Quebec. In other provinces, we'll review that as well. Now, the big issue, of course, are condos, multi urban residential buildings. And we're fortunate that as we do a lot of work and research into that, and the solutions have been identified for condos. In Ontario, we have a law that requires condo boards to cooperate if a resident wants to have an EV charger in the garage, and because prior to that, we had some condo boards that said, we can't be bothered or say no. So a lot of residents of citizens live in condos and a lot more will come in the future. So it's important for them to accommodate that. Our conference coming here at the end of April, we have an all day workshop on that how to do EV charging in condos, the role for utilities, condos and municipalities and so on. So that's sort of the next round of challenges to make it easier for on charging.   Dan Seguin  16:34 Hydro Quebec has for a number of years invested significant amounts of work, effort and money into building a network of fast charging stations in the province, including in areas where they don't necessarily expect that those charging stations would be getting a high adoption on their own. The result. A more even distribution of EV ownership between urban and rural areas. Is a better city charging infrastructure the key to increasing Evie ownership. What are your thoughts on that?   Al Cormier  17:11 I think the main key is quite a lot of public high speed charging stations. Most EVs have ranges now that go all the way up to nearly 500 kilometers per charge. So at most people probably just drive 30-40 kilometers a day. So they might charge once a week. And most charging is done at home. I imagine you have any recharge at home yourself for your car. So but if you want to venture out of Ottawa, you need to assurance that on your trip to Cornwall, or Montreal or Toronto that you'll have these charges on the way. So those have to be public charging station, they have to be level three, the high speed charging, so you can charge most of your batteries within within 15-20 minutes. So and of course we're seeing that being adopted now by canadian tire and selling it at their stores, Petro Canada's doing it cut back on the lot in their province. And you bought two activists closer to that a BC. So it's becoming an accepted practice. And the federal government is looking for another 5000 such stations on major highways in Canada. So I think that the the best strategy to promote EV growth is an extensive network of EV fast charging stations across the line. Because private static charging be largely done at home or at work. And so it's when you mentioned the longer trips that you need that assurance.   Dan Seguin  18:57 At least 1/3 of Canadians live in a multi unit residential building today. And that number is not likely to decline. Increasingly, the residential real estate industry is moving towards multi tenant construction. In Canada, two out of three homes built today are multifamily. In Ontario alone, nearly 700,000 households live in condos. Are there solutions for Canadians discouraged from buying electric vehicles because they have no easy means of charging them either in condominiums in apartment buildings or homes that lack a driveway or even a garage.   Al Cormier  19:41 Yeah, yeah, all of these things are being looked at. And as I mentioned for condominiums, there are technical solutions out there. A lot of companies will come in and set up a charging system in the condo manager and so on so forth. And electric utilities are good on how to deal with condos, assess the condo electrical system capacity and come up with an easy process for the EV owner, the condo to buy and use and charge and EV. It gets complicated because when you buy a condo in the building, you're assigned a parking spot, typically underground or on this side parking lot. And that parking spot is tied by law to your suite. So you can't say move your car to a parking spot near the electrical panel. So you have to run power to the car parking spot. But it's not insurmountable, not all that expensive. So the condo solutions are there. There are companies promoting and assisting condos to do that. They are legislation in some provinces encouraging or requiring condo boards to collaborate and help out. And then we have the other issues and older parts of cities we have people that have cars that park on the street, no driveways, no garages, Some out of Montreal, some out of vancouver, even parts of Toronto, and probably even parts of downtown Ottawa as well. And in those areas they are technology where a charger can be placed on the sidewalk or next to the sidewalk on the street side of the sidewalk so to speak. And people can charge then pay for their electricity depends on the parking arrangement on the street.   Dan Seguin  21:36 Do you believe that EV adoption is directly tied to provincial or federal financial incentives for EV buyers?   Al Cormier  21:44 very strongly tied? Yeah, we saw that in Ontario when they stop incentives. In 2018, the sales dropped by about 40%. So because EVs at this point in time costs more than regular car. These incentives help offset the cost difference. And that's the same with any new technology. As the sales volume go up and production levels increase, the per unit cost will go down. And there are strong predictions that perhaps in five years or less electric cars will charge costs the same as an ordinary car as a gasoline engine car. So these incentives are important in the meantime, to help offset the cost difference. And we clearly see the evidence of where they exist. sales go up where they don't sell. So then   Dan Seguin  22:44 do you think the electric highway will move the needle?   Al Cormier  22:49 Very much so like the electric highway? I guess the term really means highways, we're charging stations along the road so people can travel with the worries of running short of electricity. Yes, it's that's why the major companies like Suncor, Canadian tire and others are investing the government's investing in those facilities along the highways. And that is we'll remove the constraint from the viewers the range anxiety, they're afraid that they'll very rarely choose they get out of town. So the electric highway is very much important. And it is moving the needle already.   Dan Seguin  23:39 Here's a good one for you out. What's your view on the role municipalities play in the electrification of transit   Al Cormier  23:49 well transit across Canada are a municipal responsibility. And of course the municipalities buys the buses or light rail or whatever, or all the rail systems in Canada are already electric, so there's no worries there. And new ones being planned are also coming electric. But on the bus side. The emissions from diesel engine buses is not insignificant. And then major transit hubs like Ottawa, Toronto and Montreal, you have a lot of densities of buses, the city centers that are contributing significantly to pollution. So it's incumbent upon all municipalities to look at alternative technologies. They are hydrogen buses being developed. But that's a little bit down the road. We already have the electric buses we have to two companies, three companies making electric buses and Canada. One making electric school buses as well. So we have a lot transit system buying electric buses and trying it out. And the success rate so far has been quite good. The federal government is hoping to see the end of diesel engine buses in the near future. And a total switch to electric buses, that we encourage that so municipalities obviously have to go along with this thing and plan accordingly. And the funding levels from provinces in federal government, or the purchase of transit buses have to change to accommodate electric buses as well.   Dan Seguin  25:39 Can you talk to me about the EV 2020 conference coming up?   Al Cormier  25:43 Yeah, that would be our 11th annual National Conference taking place in Mississauga at the end of April. And we're already very actively involved in developing the program for the conference. And it's the place to be if you want to talk about automotive learn what's happening is electric mobility technologies, policies, etc. Or what's coming down the road. We have about 500 people from across the country that attend these things, marvelous exchange of information, strategies and policies, particularly among the municipalities and utilities that don't compete with each other. We even have exchange within industry members, some are competing with each other, but they collaborate. And we have speakers coming from universities, research centers, industry members be talking about I would say 1520 major project types dealing with policies, dealing with technology, dealing with trends, and we'll have 15 technical sessions, but about 45 to 50 speakers, seven or eight major plenary sessions, a trade show, where you see the latest and the greatest. So it's the place to be out.   Dan Seguin  27:16 Thank you for joining me today. If someone wanted to reach out to you and connect, what should they be doing?   Al Cormier  27:23 Well then go to our website, www.emc-mec.ca or just click Electric Mobility Canada and they'll take us to our website, lots of information there. Or anyone can call me 416-970-9242.   Dan Seguin  27:41 Again, thank you very much. I hope you had a lot of fun. Cheers. You're welcome that thank you for joining us today. I truly hope you enjoyed this episode of The think energy podcast. For past episodes, make sure you visit our website hydro ottawa.com backslash podcast. Lastly, if you found value in this podcast, be sure to subscribe. Anyway, this podcast is a wrap. Cheers, everyone.

---Join us for our Summer Rewind series as we feature past podcast episodes!--- EPISODE #36: If the Wizard of Oz was remade for the 21st century, Dorothy might now declare: there's no place like a net-zero home. And she'd be right. But would she need the Wizard to grant her wish for a net-zero home or would Dorothy be able to afford one on her own? In this episode, Kevin Lee – CEO of the Canadian Home Builders Association (CHBA) - tells us what it means for a home or building to be “net-zero,” the pros and cons, and what the CHBA is doing to make net zero homes an affordable reality for all current and aspiring homeowners. Related Content & Links: https://hydroottawa.com/ Websites: The Canadian Home Builders Association - https://www.CHBA.ca Linkedin: Kevin Lee - https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevin-lee-bbb49782/ Twitter: Kevin Lee - @CHBAKevinLee --- Transcript Dan Seguin  00:42 Hey, everyone, welcome back to the ThinkEnergy podcast. Dorothy said it best: "There's no place like home." Now... If the Wizard of Oz was remade for the 21st century, Dorothy might now declare there's no place like a net zero home and she'd be right. But would she need the wizard to grant her wish for a net zero home, or would Dorothy be able to afford one on her own? On today's podcast, we're going to talk about the 111 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions that Canadian homes and buildings release into the atmosphere every year. And we're also going to talk about how net zero homes and buildings are combating climate change from foundations to rooftops with each new build. Designed and constructed to produce at least as much energy as they consume, net zero home buildings are up to 80% more energy efficient than typical new homes. The key difference is that a net zero home uses renewable energy to produce the energy it consumes With a growing demand from energy conscious House Hunters looking to make their environmentally responsible choice for one of their biggest life purchases. What do they need to know about purchasing in net zero home? Who are the builders? What impact will net zero home have on the purchase price on their future energy bills? What renewable energy system is the best option? Or are there government subsidies or incentives? In short, how can more and more Canadians take advantage of living greener and more energy efficient? So let's get going with today's big question. Is there any real movement whereby net zero homes will become the new standard in the next decade and what will it take for the industry to get there joining us to shed some light on net zero Homes is the chief executive officer of the Canadian Home Builders Association. Mr. Kevin Lee. Kevin, would you mind giving us a brief description of your background, what the Canadian Home Builders Association does, and why do you think net zero homes and buildings are the future?   Kevin Lee  03:25 Well, my background is that I am an engineer with a master's in architecture. And I've worked in the housing fields my entire career, I ran my own consulting business for about 11 years and energy efficient housing, construction and research and development. I also worked for the federal government for several years running housing buildings and community research and development programs, as well as doing running programming like the R-2000 program. The energuide rating system for homes program the eagle energy retrofit homes program. So big background anon and I've been the Chief Executive Officer at the Canadian Home Builders Association for the past seven years at CHBA, as we call it. We represent builders and renovators and developers all across Canada as well as the suppliers and trades and services that support residential construction. And we work together to improve the performance of houses, improve the relations with governments to help. One of the big things we really pushed is housing affordability and making sure people can afford to buy new homes as well as afford to rent homes and there are obviously lots of challenges these days with the cost of housing. So we spent a lot of time on that. And we do have a net zero energy housing council that does work on net zero energy homes and advancing that we have a labelling programmer we have had to label close to 400 houses across the country now over the past couple of few years. And in terms of the future, with respect to net zero, we've always as an industry and as an association been leaders in energy efficiency we do incredibly well in balancing the performance - Houses today are, you know, more than 50% better than they were 25 years ago. Sometimes I hear people say, Oh, they sure don't build houses like they used to do, which I would always respond.: "Well, thank goodness!" We continue to do better and nowhere is that more true than in terms of energy efficiency. How far we're able to go with respect to net zero and under what kind of timeline I would suggest is very much a function of costing and affordability because investing in a net zero home is a great way to invest your money and in your home and there's a lot of benefits, but it's still not cheap. Definitely costs a little bit more and when it comes to regulations, we're always trying to think about affordability. So from the association perspective, or I was trying to say: Okay, well, yes, we want to make homes better, but we also want to make sure people can still afford to buy them. So let's find like most cost effective ways and cost efficient ways. And let's try not especially this day and age, and when we build such good new houses, how do we make sure that we don't increase the cost of houses with every code change that we make?   Dan Seguin  06:25 Okay, Kevin, what's the difference between a green home and a net zero home?   Kevin Lee  06:31 Well, when we talk about net zero energy homes, you're talking about a house that produces as much energy as it needs over the course of the year to sort of net out at zero, and certainly in Canada with our cold climate, you can expect that in the winter, you're probably going to be using some energy, more solar than you're able to generate, but on other times when you don't need as much energy - Typically in art programs as through solar energy, you're able to create surplus energy that you're able to feed back into the grid and net zero. So that's a net zero energy home. A green home tends to encompass many other things that will almost always encapsulate energy efficiency. But it'll also look at things like green environmental products, especially in different roofing materials, that kind of thing. So green tends to encompass a little bit more than net zero. And while many of so in our, in our case, in our program, we really focus on the energy efficiency piece. So, you know, builders do add a lot of other special features to homes that would be green, but the big differences the green is more about the broader environmental, whereas our net zero work is very focused on the energy efficiency.   Dan Seguin  07:45 When building or renovating to net zero standards, what are the key considerations you should start with? Are we talking everything from walls, ventilation, foundation, windows, and more?   Kevin Lee  07:59 Oh, absolutely. I mean, certainly when you're driving to get down to basically using close to zero energy, you have to look at everything that uses energy and that can, you know, save energy and be efficient with energy. So every element of the home, as you said, walls, ceilings, foundations, windows, mechanical systems: hugely important. So you have to look at all of it and where do you start? Well, frankly, if you're a homebuyer, you start by looking for a builder with the experience and know how to do this and even through our programs. And we follow, we use the energuide rating system, which is a government of Canada system and label for measuring the energy performance of homes. And there are energy advisories that are certified by the Government of Canada to do that. And we provide those energy advisors additional training, to work with our builders to be experts and getting all the way to net zero. So they're sort of recognized through our program through additional training and education. So really, as a homebuyer or a homeowner, because we now have a retrofit program as well for renovating houses to get to this level. Really it's finding the right finding the right contractor homebuilder, you know, you can look at CHBA.ca. And you can find a list of our rent renovators and our home builders that are certified, they know what they're doing. And they're working very closely with an energy advisor who works on the design because like I said, when you're trying to get to net zero, you're talking about squeezing every ounce of energy you can out of that house. And it's every element. So it's not so much that you start one place. You look at everything.   Dan Seguin  09:36 You touched on this earlier, but wondering if you could further demystify for me, how does a net zero home produce as much energy - clean renewable energy - as it consumes?   Kevin Lee  09:48 Yeah, well, and I did touch on that earlier. So I'll go back to that. And the idea is that again, especially in Canada, it's a little bit tricky, you know, when it's very cold, you know, you're going to have to use some energy. Typically in our program, the renewal Bull energy that is used is photovoltaics or, you know solar panels, on the roof generating electricity. But when it's when it's really cold, you're probably not going to be able to generate enough energy to meet the entire heating load of the home. As well as all the other loads that are going on: ventilation. We plug a lot of things in too, we're charging a lot of cell phones and all these other things. There's a pretty heavy what we call base load these days as well. So what you're trying to do is make sure that as you look at the course of the whole year, you're producing as much energy as you need. Sometimes you might be producing surplus energy. Sometimes you may be using a little bit more energy than your system can produce, but overall, you net out at zero through the course of the year.   Dan Seguin  10:48 Okay, Kevin, I'm wondering if you could dispel any myths around the cost associated to building a standard home compared to a net zero home. Is it significantly more to be net zero?   Kevin Lee  11:02 I think probably the biggest myth would be if somebody said it doesn't cost anything because it definitely you know, we're talking about you know, different technologies you're talking about things like moving from standard double pane windows to triple pane windows, you're talking about being more insulation walls, sometimes building you know, fatter walls and using you know, more lumber or whatever your material is to build more, so there's definitely an additional cost. Some of that clause is defrayed by your energy savings, which is great over time. And so it really varies it depends on your climate, it depends on the size of your home, it depends on the design of your home and those design features. You know, some people like to have lots of windows probably we all love having lots of windows are actually one of the more expensive things though, and they also are tend to be a bit of a heat loss. If you have lots of windows, you might have to spend money in other places. So is it more expensive? Yeah, absolutely it is. It's part of the reason why we say before we get this into regulation, we want to make sure we continue with a research and innovation and costing to bring those prices down. And then when it comes to how much more is it going to be, it also depends on what's the baseline construction standard of your builder. Some builders build the code, which is adding their energy efficiency measures in the building code, and that's still a very good home. Others build the levels like the Energy Star program, which is a little bit higher. So your jump from ENERGY STAR to net zero or net zero ready is a little bit less. So that's not a very direct answer, because it really varies and you can't say it's 5% 10%, etc. It really depends. But it's definitely a great investment. And for people who are looking to stay in their home a long time looking are conscious about climate change and the environment, want a more comfortable home because the nice thing about a triple glazed window just as an example as you sit beside there's practically no condensation. You're right comfortable sitting there. And it's like in the winter. So a lot of good reasons to choose to invest your money that way. And it really comes down to working with your builders to figure out, you know what those costs are going to be.   Dan Seguin  11:58 Is there a net zero movement in Canada? Is it in the response to climate change science now showing that in order to have a real impact on carbon emissions, reducing isn't enough, we essentially have to neutralize our environmental footprint.   Kevin Lee  13:29 I think that the energy efficiency movement has been going on in Canada for a long time. And you know, we developed the R-2000 program back in the 1980s, in response to the oil crisis prior to that, and then as climate change and environmental concerns have grown and grown, there's been a constant movement of improved energy efficiency, and energy performance of houses and net zero is really that ultimate goal. And as concerns about climate change, continue to escalate, obviously, every sector of the economy needs to do its part to get there. And homes are a big part of that. I will say that, you know, we can definitely get to net zero from every house in Canada built that way, at some point. As I said, it's really about at what point are we able to do that where it's not making it too expensive for homeowners. And the other really critical thing when you're talking about climate change and GHG emissions from housing, it's the very much the existing housing stock that's really critical. The new houses are very efficient, we can make them more efficient, the returns are diminishing a little bit though, and the more energy efficient, you make it the less you get in terms of savings over time. But the existing housing stock and especially the older housing stock is so critically important and that's why we've added renovation to our program and we always recommend to governments things like there should be a home renovation tax credit for energy efficiency, so that people in their existing homes can improve them and we can help defray the costs that,   Dan Seguin  15:04 Kevin, we've covered renovations and new builds. What about apartments and condos? Are they a challenge or an opportunity?   Kevin Lee  15:14 Well, you know, as with every challenge, of course, there is an opportunity. So a little bit of both, for sure. We can, again, you know, the technology is there, it's a little trickier, with big buildings because you tend to have more units in them and not as much surface areas. Actually, for renewables, you know, you need a certain amount of surface area on the roof for photovoltaics and the solar systems that would go on them. They also tend to have a lot of glazing, windows, people like to have, you know, their exposed walls to be all glass if they could have it in many cases, and that glazing is often the weak spot in in energy efficiency. It looks great, but it tends to be not as efficient as a nice thick wall with lots of installation, but the technology exists, it really comes down to the cost and also potential and those types of systems, you might have to have your renewables off site, or you might be looking at your company draw renewable energy from another place rather than trying to be generating it all with the building itself. And frankly, we also think that that's a big part of, as, you know, we look down the road to the future for net zero homes, you know, should every house be generating its own? Or will it make more sense and will it be more effective for there to be more community systems that generate the renewables and you don't have to have it on your individual unit, I'm going to do a home it could be nearby. So the power generation or renewable power generation is also going to be a big part we think of the future as we move towards sort of net zero economy at large.   Dan Seguin  16:53 You've alluded to this earlier. There's a variety of home energy performance standards to make homes more energy efficient, are you able to expand on the Canadian Home Builders Association net zero home labeling program? How are those standards baselined?   Kevin Lee  17:12 Well, when we set out to develop our program, we wanted to go with sort of tried tested and true rating system. And so, as I mentioned, we base our program on the government of Canada's energuide rating system. That system has labeled over a million homes in Canada. It's backed by the Government of Canada, there are energy advisors trained and certified by the Government of Canada. So that we feel like that is the system to use. The Energy Star program uses that as well. The R-2000 program uses it as well. So the energuide rating system is sort of the point system that grades how much energy you use, and then programs like energy star and our net zero label are points on that scale, if you will, that you're trying To achieve to show a certain level of energy efficiency. And this is the kind of thing that was also used through the equal energy retrofit homes program, a grant program run by the government that through that program, over 600,000 homes are renovated and each one of those dots and energuide label as well as the nice thing about the existing home side of things. And that renovation path is the energuide. Label also provides the homeowner full report on where they can go with their house to make it energy efficient. So you kind of get this pathway, which we think is really important because you can't always afford to do everything on a renovation at the same time. But the energuide system allows you to plan over a few years to do maybe not maybe you can do your windows this year, you're doing insulation in the basement and sealing the next you're going to replace your furnace and three years, whatever the case may be, but you can sort of see that pathway laid out so we really feel like the inner guide rating system is super important. We also think that it should be the rating system for every home in Canada and every program, I often use the analogy, boy, if we have all different rating systems for nutrition labels, it would be very difficult to imagine if you if you went to buy mushrooms off the shelf at the grocery store and you pick up two cans, and it's two different energy labels and you can't compare you wouldn't know which one to buy. And so we're big proponents of saying let's use the energuide rating system, it's the Government of Canada. Let's get that on for all programs, so that everybody can compare and we can what we need to improve in Canada is energy literacy for consumers. It's hard sometimes - it's an invisible thing, energy efficiency. So good labeling and information would help everybody make the decisions.   Dan Seguin  19:39 Okay, time to dust off your crystal ball. What are some of the emerging technologies, innovations that hold much promise for the future of an energy efficient and a net zero home? What's exciting you right now in the industry?   Kevin Lee  20:00 Well, I think you know, what's exciting is that we have within our membership, leaders in the industry all across the country that are working together to find the solutions. And the interesting thing about a home is its builders putting together all of these different technologies and making choices and using energy advisors to help them and make those choices. So I think what's exciting is that everybody's working together. And we're also working together to innovate, and also identify to manufacturers, what are the next things we need, especially to make the energy efficiency componentry even less expensive, so it can be more readily available to everyone. And so whether you're looking at there's some very one of the most important things in energy efficiency is air tightness and air sealing to avoid air leakage. And there's some great new technologies coming in to help make that easier because it's one of the most important things and also one of the most complicated things. Think about every  penetration if you own the house, whether it's your, your cable guy or your, you know venting for gas appliances, or there's always lots of things popping in and out of what we call the building envelope, as well as it's hard at floor-wall intersections and wall to ceiling intersections. Anyway, there's some very interesting technology coming out for air sealing. Another thing that's very interesting is net zero energy homes. Sometimes joke, you can eat them with a candle. So you need very little energy. And interestingly, our heating systems and even our cooling systems are built for bigger loads are built for bigger houses or even a house with things that uses more energy. So optimizing our mechanical systems for really small loads becomes very important, as does then the distribution of that air around the home to make sure that the temperatures are always balanced. And then there's also the opportunity to integrate ventilation smartly into those sorts of combination systems. Things that we still need to do you know, and would be great to find solutions for in research and development. You know, if we want to pack more insulation in the walls, we really need to have more effective R-values, those are called like, basically we've sort of hit a limit right now on how much how much insulation we can put in a wall, and then you have to build a fatter wall. But building a better fatter wall becomes more expensive, it'd be really great if let's say within the standard two by six wall, you can put insulation in still what ends up being five and a half inches, but it had what we call greater, much higher R-values. So you'd have to build a thicker wall, you just put better insulation inside. So those are some of the directions that we're headed, I'm looking for a very good technology to build the stuff right now, but we're constantly innovating and we know we need more research and development to work together with and the government's always been a big supporter of that and housing because our industry is made a lot of small organizations, we don't have the Fords and the Mercedes and none of the world that have been r&d shops themselves. So collaborating with government to find these solutions that are more affordable is going to be really important as we move to do more and more of these over time.   Dan Seguin  23:14 And let's take this from R&D to behaviors, what kinds of lifestyle changes are required within net zero home?   Kevin Lee  23:23 Well, I think the great thing about energy efficient homes is they tend to not require any lifestyle change. Energy Efficiency is about being more efficient using technology and construction techniques so that you can live in your home and enjoy it. I always draw the distinction between energy efficiency and energy conservation. Energy conservation is taking a shorter shower, turn down the thermostat, and wear a sweater that's conserving energy. Energy Efficiency is about using technology to make sure that you can still do the things that you like to do, but the houses energy efficient in the first place. Now, lots of people who buy a net zero home are very energy conscious and environmentally conscious as well. So they'll probably elect to do lots of other things. They're probably very avid recyclers and composters and maybe they will turn down the thermostat just because they want to save even more energy. But the nice thing about energy efficiency and net zero homes is sometimes you can't even tell that it's an energy efficient home other than maybe, wow, this is a lot more comfortable than the other house. There's no draft. I can sit beside my windows and I feel really great. There are a lot of benefits and lifestyle benefits, but you typically don't require lifestyle changes.   Dan Seguin  24:41 Despite demand for greener homes. The majority of homes built in Canada continue to be built to a minimum standard. Why is there a disconnect between housing desires and what is actually constructed? Will we see a time where building codes could force all new housing to meet the net zero standard. What does the future look like?   Kevin Lee  25:07 Well, I think we need to be a little bit careful when we say there's a disconnect between code and what people want, because you also have to add in what people are willing to pay for. So there are a lot - So for example, we already have in our net zero program, and the Energy Star program has existed for a long time, known as quite successful. But as we've talked about all through this, it's a little bit more expensive to build to these standards. And so people have a choice and they often choose and I've spent my whole career working in energy efficiency, and sometimes it's been frustrating because homeowners rightly have the choice. What do they want? Do they want to have a hot tub? Do they want granite countertops? Do they want more space? Do they want to pay more to live closer to town or, or do they want to live a little further away from town where it might be cheaper, and then on top of that, you've got to save If you want a more energy efficient house, it'll cost more. And you're sort of doing these trade-offs  within your budget is why we're so keen on making sure that energy efficiency standards are also married to technology that makes it not more expensive, so that people don't have to make that choice, and in terms of today's minimum requirements through the building code, they're actually very good. And they continue to improve and they're much higher than they were years ago. So when will the code end up being net zero? Well, we would suggest that that should be at a time when you're not causing affordability challenges for Canadians especially for first time homebuyers. That of course you have to build the code, social housing, and even social housing,  ask a social housing provider why they're not building to ENERGY STAR net zero standards. And the reason is because it's very expensive for them, and they're more important for them. It's just to put roofs over people's houses and so it's that that trade as it's happening right now, and it's why we're really pushing for advancements in technology so that it's not more expensive. So we can, when the regulation comes, we're not causing affordability challenges so we can get there. It's just a question of when.   Dan Seguin  27:15 So until net zero homes become the standard, what are some simple things that people can do to improve on to make their existing home more energy efficient?   Kevin Lee  27:26 Well, the first thing I would say is, you know, think of it holistically. And there are various programs that will supplement the cost of having an energy advisor come by, but really that the best thing is to have an energuide rating system evaluation of your home, and that'll give you the big picture. Sometimes people think for example, that, uh, you know, I just, I should replace my windows and usually you're replacing windows because the seals shot at that point and they're starting to get milky and there's some condensation or whatever, and it's time or maybe wood windows and there's been condensation And the paint is chipping, you know, I want to I need to get the window. Turns out that if you ask an energy advisor to come in and do an energy analysis, he or she'll probably tell you that you can do that and you'll get good enjoyment out of that. But for a fraction of the cost, you can actually just go and blow a bunch of cellulose insulation in your attic and you'll save twice as much energy and so you know, looking at the insulation is a big thing but I would start with an energy assessment to have somebody come in and tell you all the things you can do but through the you know, air sealing is really important. Insulation in the attic is tends to be cheap. Go up through the attic hatch, blow insulation, you're good. Obviously insulating your basement  is a good one to do. It's usually accessible if you have an unfinished basement and does have the benefit of all that improved comfort. Obviously if you have old mechanical systems and old furnace and old water heater, replacing those tends to be a really good move as well. So there's lots we can do lots we need to do over time to help us. We're hoping through the economic recovery that hopefully we're going to get into very well over the next little while that the government steps forward and helps a little bit with what we're recommending would be a tax credit that really incentivizes people to do this. And the other thing I have to say is, when you go to do this stuff, hire a reputable contractor. It's not worth getting the cash guy to do a side job ladder off the back of the truck, save a few bucks, there are so many risks. So we have a whole get it in writing program that we promote. If you go on our CHP website, it just talks about the pitfalls of not getting a contract, not getting receipts, not getting warranty, all the things that we should all do with your house is probably the biggest investment you'll ever make in your in your lifetime. Let's make sure we take care of that and protect ourselves. So just hire a reputable contractor. And if you're looking for that list, you can go on our website at chba.ca and we list our members all across the country.   Dan Seguin  29:57 So Kevin, I really think this is worth repeating where can folks learn more about net zero homes and find a list of builders in their region?   Kevin Lee  30:06 Yeah, absolutely well, so we are the Canadian Home Builders Association, and our acronym is CHBA. So if you go to CHBA.ca, or frankly, if you just Google net zero in Canada will pop up on your Google Search pretty much at the top. And on our website, there's all the information there's information about buying a new home, there's information about renovating, renovating the home and making smart choices. And there's information about our net zero program and a full list of all of the builders that we recognize through our program across Canada. So you can find a builder in your region that would be more than happy to work with you and more and more so renovators as well I could help you get on your pathway to getting to net zero.   Dan Seguin  30:51 How about we close off with some rapid fire questions? What is the one thing you can't live without?   Kevin Lee  30:59 I think it's music, I love music. I'm a bit of a musician. So let's go with that.   Dan Seguin  31:03 What is something that challenges you?   Kevin Lee  31:06 To try to change the world in positive ways, and it's fun to work on that every day. It's a never ending challenge for all of us. But trying to make good, solid contributions. We have a better world and a better Canada is a big challenge and something I love doing.   Dan Seguin  31:22 If you could have one superpower, what would it be?   Kevin Lee  31:26 It would be too slow time. I don't have enough time to get everything done. So I would be able to just freeze time, get a bunch of things done, and then turn time moving forward. Again, that would be that would be great. Even for doing hobbies. I don't have enough time to read. I'd love to stop time and read a couple of chapters every once in a while.   Dan Seguin  31:47 If you could turn back time and talk to your 18 year old self, what would you tell them?   Kevin Lee  31:52 Well, I would tell them the same thing that I'm telling my kids - which is, you know, do the best at everything that you do this work put in the hard work. It will always pay off even if you think it won't. If you're working on something that you don't enjoy, get it done, do a good job on it. And you'll be surprised down the road when, even if it's 'Wow, I hated doing that. I never want to do that again'. Well, you learned it, you did a good job. Yeah, work hard and put in the effort and have fun while you're doing it. Find the fun and everything.   Dan Seguin  32:24 What do you currently find most interesting in your sector?   Kevin Lee  32:28 The most interesting thing in our sector right now, I think is the challenges that we're facing with affordability and trying to make sure young Canadians and new Canadians can afford their homes. We have a lot of things that are driving up the prices of new homes and, and mortgages and mortgage rules have been tightening, making it even more challenging. So finding that right solution that will really help people become homeowners and get into it. While we also are continuing to try and improve all homes. We've spent this whole time talking about energy efficiency, but we want to make sure it doesn't cost more so people can afford owns that. That whole affordability challenge, which our members are working on all the time, I think is the most interesting and the most challenging, but a huge opportunity because we know, almost every Canadian either owns their home, but two thirds of Canadians own their home and most renters wish they could and hope they will one day you know, so helping to achieve Canadians dreams, I think is a huge opportunity and a huge challenge that we're all working on.   Dan Seguin  33:28 Well, Kevin, we've reached the end of another episode of The ThinkEnergy podcast. Last question for you. How can our listeners learn more about your association? How can they connect?   Kevin Lee  33:43 Yeah, definitely check out our website at chba.ca. All the information is there. We are also structured as an association with provincial and local associations as part of our organization. So we have local associations all across Canada. And pretty much every urban center and so that's another place that you can connect very locally with the members of our organization that can help you with your housing dreams.   Dan Seguin  34:12 Again, Kevin, thank you very much for joining me today. I hope you had a lot of fun. Cheers. Thank you for joining us today. I truly hope you enjoyed this episode of The ThinkEnergy podcast. For past episodes, make sure you visit our website hydroottawa.com/podcasts. Lastly, if you found value in this podcast, be sure to subscribe. Cheers, everyone.

---Join us for our Summer Rewind series as we feature past podcast episodes!--- EPISODE #15: Smart buildings have the potential to consume less energy, generate less waste, and provide better quality spaces for their occupants. But just how practical is it for building owners to adopt these new technologies and can they actually improve the bottom line? Terry Young, Vice president of operations at KRP Properties sits down to talk to us about the rise of smart buildings and the importance of training his employees on the ever-changing technology. Transcript: Dan Seguin  00:44 Greetings everyone and welcome back. This is Episode 15 of the ThinkEnergy podcast. We spend our lives in buildings at home at the office, community centers, shopping malls, movie theaters, and the list goes on. We're also surrounded by smart technology and gadgets, smartphones that can turn on the heating in your home before you get there smartwatches that track how many steps you take each day. Now that smart technology has made a remarkable entry into commercial office building space. Enabled by technology smart buildings have the potential to consume less energy, generate less waste, and provide better quality spaces for their occupants. Did you know buildings produce 17% of Canada's greenhouse gases, including emissions from generating electricity that buildings use. modern buildings are equipped with 1000s of sensors recording air quality, humidity, motion, temperature and the presence of noxious gas, light carbon monoxide, formaldehyde. These sensors continuously record energy consumption and waste. Smart algorithms running on network computers, analyze sensor generated data in real time to keep the building systems running at peak efficiency while the air is clean and fresh. So here's today's big question: Smart buildings lead smart cities. How practical is it for building owners to adopt these new technologies? And can they actually improve the bottom line? Our guest today is Terry Young, Vice President of Operations at KRP properties. He manages a portfolio of over 30 commercial properties in Ottawa's high tech hub in Kanata. Welcome to the ThinkEnergy podcast,Terry. So what's your take on this smart building trend? What are some of the technologies you've adopted in your own buildings?   Terry Young  03:02 So I don't even know if I'd call it a trend it is a "must-have" moving forward. Basically, what we've tried to do is try to understand how our buildings, use the utilities, be a gas, be it utilities, gas, electric, and or water, and try to understand how that from an energy perspective is being used. But how do I make my clients comfortable. So we've sort of broken it down into three things. safety, comfort and energy. That's how we kind of run our buildings. So some of the technologies that we've put in place is anywhere from, you know, low voltage, DC lighting, LED lights. We've put in, state of the art building automation systems, we run artificial intelligence, the IoT devices, there's millions of them. We've tried probably millions, and we don't have millions, but we've you know, we play a lot in the space to try to make you more comfortable burning less energy.   Dan Seguin  04:07 Quick question, how does AI fit into that? You just talked about artificial intelligence.   Terry Young  04:12 Yeah. So I could I could talk here for like five hours on this. This is my thing. I love this. So what we found is we get data coming in from the sensors and the IoT thing. So we talked about earlier on, how do you maximize the efficiency of how you're running a building? You say, Well, I can turn off the lights at four o'clock when people are going absolutely. But how can holistically you look at how the building's burning its energy and how you're maximizing the comfort to the fourth or fifth decimal place. And this is where AI comes in. So we feed all of the data that we get in from the sensors in our buildings, and we feed it into a data analytics platform. And what that does, it understands how the building is really being used by the people in the building. Okay, and I'll give you a quick example. So if you've got an r&d department who meet every second Thursday, for instance, and what the building will do, it'll start understanding the trends of how that room in that section of the buildings being used. So if it's not being used, the building's going to say, Well, I don't need to light it, and I don't need the air condition it properly. So if I'm only going to do that, if indeed, they use the building, so over time, trending will actually start to occur and the analytics takes over to automatically lower the temperature, turn off the lights, etc. Likewise, these guys are going for pints and they're trying to bugger off every Friday, not that never ever happens, where the building sort of starts understanding that he'll start shutting the lights down three o'clock. Yeah. So So basically, we've been very forced in some of our buildings, you know, putting this AI stuff in, we can save 27, even up to 30% of energy just by turning this stuff off.   Dan Seguin  05:59 Okay, well, that actually flows nicely into the next one. And maybe you have something to add. So the question was around, how does it work? And how does it help make your building minimize energy costs, support the electricity grid and mitigate environmental impacts?   Terry Young  06:18 Yeah, again, great question. And it's quite loaded, and has many levels of answers. So I'll try to simplify it. Minimize the use of every electrical device in your building. Basically, if you have another example, if you got a 60 horsepower motor on the roof drive and a fan, for instance, what that does is now this technology will say I don't need the full 60 horsepower. So at three o'clock in the afternoon, maybe we need 22 horsepower, or six horsepower. So we put variable speed drives in variable stuff. And again, remember, this technology is understanding holistically how that fan works. So you only will use the minimum amount to maintain your comfort. So ultimately, what will happen is twofold. One, you're going to burn less energy full stop. Among other things, and this is where the math is, is sort of very hard to quantify. I don't replace it normally. So if you have a useful motor, you have a useful life and say 18 to 20 years on electric motor, for instance, that's under normal conditions, I've minimized those normal conditions now with the software. So what happens is, I don't need to spend $300,000, or whatever that huge amount of investment from a capital perspective, to buy a new motor 18 years, I maybe want to push that to 22 to 25, you expand your life expectancy, here's the thing, the amount of energy and the amount of everything carbon and everything to build the motor, I don't I'm not throwing it out. I'm not building a new one, I'm actually trying to save and extend the lifespan of what I have already.   Dan Seguin  08:01 The only thing is maintenance.   Terry Young  08:03 Exactly. And again, again, they come back to the artificial intelligence, predictive maintenance. So this is the artificial intelligence gives us the ability to predict based on trending analytics now, so we actually be able to maintain and operate even when I say 100 times better, literally 100 times better than we did before.   Dan Seguin  08:21 So these improving these system efficiencies, like event, venting and lighting you're talking about does actually affect the bottom line, and I would assume in a positive way. And also with regard to your your carbon footprint.   Terry Young  08:37 Yeah, well, so so not to get too technical. But the more efficient, you can run a building, obviously, the less money that you have to spend to run it. So right, that's the bottom line number. Likewise, you create a brand when you run a building like this, that people want to be there, and they're willing to pay a premium sometimes to lease this space in a building like that, because their operating costs are lower, and they're more comfortable. So it's good business, very good business.   Dan Seguin  09:07 Okay. What are some of the potential barriers, though, to the adoption of smart building solutions? Like I mean, are there any talk to me maybe about return on investment? Maybe the inconvenience factor downtimes to get that set up?   Terry Young  09:22 Yeah. So not too much downtime, return on investment, certainly. What probably the biggest, if not, it's not anything, it's usually about the money to do this, how when, where all that kind of stuff we can play with, but coming up with the million dollars or the 350,000, or whatever it is. That's the biggest problem have. Some of this technology, the payback is not even quantifiable. For years, 10 years, 12 years. I'm a finance guy. And that doesn't make any sense. So, you know, after seven years, there's not really a return. So we try to, you know, put if, if it's any less than three years, it's a pretty good business. Sort of decision, the biggest besides the money is, and again, before I continue to number two, there are specific financial institutions that were specialize in this too, by the way. So if you gotta if you've got a building, or you're in the space where you don't know exactly what to do, and you don't think you have the money, most of our lending institutions, now they do have specific people who understand the technology and are willing to loan you money to buy the technology, because that's what they're really specifically, their expertise there. So there's divisions of these and the big all the big banks have divisions now. And we often get third party financing from these guys. Okay, so that's one, the financing check. Number two is we're having a big issue with HR. So it's one thing to put in a great system, and it's amazing, who's gonna run it. So at the end of the day, you still need a smart human behind everything. So you know, we often say, Well, you know, working ourselves out of a job, never, you will always always need somebody to understand the number and how to run it. So, you know, most of our workforce is probably like, in everybody's outfit. You know, they're 55. And over. Yeah. And so we're bringing a lot of this technology in, and we were struggling trying to find the expertise to run it.   Dan Seguin  11:27 Yeah, that was that was one of the questions actually, that I had, now that you have this advanced technology in your buildings? How do you convince the operators that you have in hand, to join that smart workforce? And how do you recruit, are they are they there yet? Do you have that workforce available?   Terry Young  11:47 No, I don't have a fully, you know, our workforce is is again, probably 60% is over 55 years old, we have adopted a lot. What we've done is we've had to change the way we do business a little bit. So when we purchase something, we don't purchase just the thing, I purchased training for the thing. Okay, you see how that changed a little bit. Now, he come back to the economics now. So the ROI, because I've just increased my bill a little bit. But in order to maximize like golf lessons, and I use this example, 1000 times, so I buy a brand new set of ping golf clubs. And if I give that to a person who doesn't know how to play golf, the ball is still gonna be in the woods. Yeah, it's best to buy the big golf clubs and get a golf lesson or two. Yeah, it's worth the 1200 bucks, it really is. And this is where we are right now. So we've done in all of our building automation systems, or AI, I bring the guy in, bring the boys in, and we have, here's how I can make my client because we're very, you know, we're, it's almost a personal thing for us. And so it's our clients, it's my clients, if I can make you more comfortable by sitting in some training and doing a little better job, that's what I'm going to do. And most of our guys are very, very dedicated like that. So you know, training, training, training is the key. And at the end result, when we look and we and I obviously bring numbers to all this and benchmark this. We're doing better. So we make our clients more comfortable. And by burning less energy, life is good. That's basically our job. Cool, you know?   Dan Seguin  13:17 Yeah, will optimization of these systems provide data that can translate into actionable asset repairs or replacement?   Terry Young  13:26 Oh, absolutely. Oh, I did. Yeah. Yeah, no, we're a lot. I wouldn't say all, but a lot of our capital investment that was based on analytics. And basically we break these numbers in. And we can cross reference that now from a financial perspective, see, understand how much from an operational perspective we've been spending on a certain asset class, be it a fan or a motor, something like that. And then the analytics have come in and say you've repaired this 66 times you have 88 service calls, heat and cold calls. There's an issue, there's a and you know, you there's a red point here, you should look at replacing this, because there's a couple of parameters that aren't looking good. Now, if you didn't have some piece of software, looking at this, there's no way that you could, you know, we have 10s of 1000s of devices, you'd never be able to do that. But this AI stuff, when you open the screen, it actually comes up with a green, red and yellow. So if it's red, we got to look at it. If it's green, we're good. And it sort of categorizes in a hierarchy perspective, what I need to look at exactly and remember every point is being looked at so I know right down to the thermostat if there's an issue.   Dan Seguin  14:39 We're talking a lot about the technology but you have these providers also they're closely linked to that the building automation systems of this world if you want, are you able to expand on your partnership model to execute on your smart building strategy?   Terry Young  14:54 Oh, absolutely. The reason the only reason why are successful is because We have great partners. And shout out to you guys as well. The Hydro Ottawa guys, we budget and we look at what we're going to do based on your recommendations and your expertise. You have teams of really smart people, get them around the table, they're more than happy. They're some of the smartest guys in our business. Ask him for advice. What a concept. You know, so we literally get partners, and that's exactly we don't have vendors and clients and we got partners sit around a table, and we got lots of smart people. We got building automation, guys, we got cybersecurity guys, i t guys, utility guys. And they're all wanting to try to make a difference. So you sit around a table, you put a sort of a pathway, and you can It's amazing. What what can be achieved with smart people around the table. And then so you layer then the finance piece, you layer, the analytics piece, you layer the smarts, there's no way you can make you the right decision has to float to the top. Okay? So you never you don't second guess yourself anymore. So if you have to spend a million dollars or 5 million, whatever it is, you know, beyond the shadow of a doubt, you've made a really good decision because everybody around the table is in the same direction as you are.   Dan Seguin  16:20 Let's look at the other side of the spectrum. All those good decisions. But is there something that keeps you up at night? What makes you nervous?   Terry Young  16:31 Cybersecurity? You know, I sit on a pile of boards, and we have a conference every year with real calm, which specifically understands how the operational side of the building operates. We're all online now. Okay. And it's vulnerable, in certain circumstances, how you are online from a building perspective. So there's, there's bad guys in the world, unfortunately. And, you know, for whatever reason, they're trying to be destructive. And how you can sort of solve that, or how to barricade those bad guys to come. You know, because you don't want your clients, you just want to keep lights on, keep them warm. And some bad guy wants to stop that, unfortunately. So we put up a pile of sort of cybersecurity and firewalls and a whole pile of IT things that some, again, one of our IT experts, sort of helps us out with, but at the end of the day, I'm worried that as we get further and further down the line, everything is online, everything, you know, there, there's a cybersecurity issue, and that there's a cost to that. And so we got all this data is out there, we have our buildings are our clients, sorry, rely on us as landlords to ensure that, that they're safe, and their lights are on and their their heat and cold. So, you know, as we get more and more technologically advanced, we have to combat that every single day. The building of yesteryear was, don't let the guy in by the electrical switch in the electrical room, lights are still going to be on. That's not the case anymore. You know, you're going even this bill is probably no light switches. Most of our buildings don't so if you you know, so that that's that's probably what keeps me up the most.   Dan Seguin  18:32 that was very informational. I appreciate this. Listen, thank you very much for joining me today. I hope you enjoyed it. I did. If someone wanted to connect with you, what's the best way?   Terry Young  18:42 Hey, my phone for sure. call my office KRP properties or tyoung@krpproperties.com? Absolutely. I have a LinkedIn profile as well. And I enjoy speaking on this topic. very passionate. Yeah, I Well, I like it, it's better. The buildings that we run are better because of it. And I think as a society, and as a community, we're very fortunate to have very tight knit community. If we all chat, which we do our carbon footprint as a whole as our industry can drop, because we're just doing things a little better, a little cleaner, so I can learn from somebody they can learn from us how to do a little bit better. I think we can you know how to eat an elephant one bite at a time. So I think we're going to do really good things here.   Dan Seguin  19:25 Thanks again. Tori. Thank you. Have a great day. You too. Hey, folks, thank you for joining us today. I truly hope you enjoyed this episode. For past episodes, make sure you visit our website hydroottawa.com/podcast. Lastly, if you found value in this podcast, we'd appreciate a rating on iTunes, or maybe even tell a friend or a colleague. Anyway, this podcast is a wrap. Peace, everyone.

The race is on to reach Canada's target - net-zero emissions by 2050. This is a relatively aggressive timeline, so what should businesses be thinking about now? How do we future proof commercial properties and other industries that are large-emitters for the net-zero future? Glenn Mooney - Manager of Energy Services at Envari, joins us to share his knowledge on sustainable energy solutions and the practical steps that businesses should start with. Related Content & Links:  Glenn Mooney - Manager of Energy Services, Envari  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/glenn-mooney-4656265/ Envari Energy Solutions - https://www.envari.com --- Transcript: Dan Seguin  00:02 Hey, everyone, welcome back to the ThinkEnergy podcast. Canada's climate plan has put the country on track to not only meet but exceed its 2030 Paris Agreement emissions reduction goals. What's more, Canada is moving entirely to net zero emissions by 2050. A lot of Canadians embrace this approach citing the environment and climate change as major factors. But there are some that will require a heavier lift than others to achieve these future net zero targets. For some, that means planning now. The Paris Agreement target is less than 10 years away, and 2050 isn't so far into the future as it sounds. With only three decades to go. The finish line is closer than we think. The International Energy Agency released a report stating that these goals will require rapid scaling of energy efficiency, renewable energy, and electrification. The Government of Canada has introduced new funding and new initiatives to help support the commercial sector promising 3 billion to establish a netzero accelerator fund to help large emitters reduce their emissions. The pandemic has given all of us the opportunity to rethink our energy habits, lifestyles, our impacts on the environment, and of course, how we work. Think of all these office towers that have sat empty for more than a year. And the discussions that are being had about the viability of remote work versus returning to the office. A lot of companies and industries are in uncharted territory. Will tenants return to those office towers? Add to this the expectation to meet emission targets by making investments in their properties. And there's a lot of uncertainty, but perhaps also opportunity. So here's today's big question: How do we future proof commercial properties and other industries that are large emitters for the net zero future? Our guest today is the manager of energy services for Envari, a subsidiary of Hydro Ottawa, which offers large scale sustainable energy solutions for businesses, governments and other utilities. Dear listeners, please welcome my friend Glenn Mooney. Glenn, this race to reach net zero emissions by 2050 seems like a mission tailor made for the expertise and services of your organization. Perhaps you can start by telling us a bit about yourself, what drew you to your current role? And what does Envari do?   Glenn Mooney  04:00 Sure Dan, thanks. I'm kind of the old guy. So I've been around the energy business for a long, long time I started way back in, in the nuclear world. So I actually worked in the Bruce at one point and then I moved into energy efficiency, Sustainability. I worked for the old Ontario hydro, I worked in performance contracting for a while. So energy management's always been a path that I followed. And it's kind of brought us here so I was actually here at the start of Envari or what used to be Energy Ottawa energy services. So we got to kind of build a business around just needs in the business world with supporting customers in areas that they didn't have support. And so I like to call it concept to commissioning so we do anything that's energy or sustainability related, we do from the analyzation side two studies. We really love to build projects. So that's kind of where we go we commissioned projects we do work in a lot of fields, energy, electric vehicles, battery storage, lots of lighting, tons of lighting, HVAC, building automation, anything sustainability or energy or greenhouse gas, data analytics and presentation, we build generation projects. So we touch pretty much anything that is energy resources: electricity, natural gas, water, steam. We've been involved in that.   Dan Seguin  05:22 Now, Glenn, what's the first piece of advice you would give to municipalities, large commercial property owners, and those in large industries about these emission reduction target dates of 2030 and 2050.   Glenn Mooney  05:38 That's something I think a lot about these days and as a person that's been doing this for a little bit longer than some, 2030 is not that far away, that's nine years away. So if somebody is giving you some targets for nine years from now, you better be thinking about it now. And 2050, that's not that far away, either. If we think back to y2k, or 9/11, that wasn't that long ago. So it doesn't take long to cover 20 years. So when we're making our decisions, we need to be thinking about that.   Dan Seguin  06:04 We know the final goal is net zero by 2050. That can seem like a huge hurdle for some, but with three decades to get there, it's more of a journey. Where do they begin? Let's look at this through maybe a strategy lens, planning, forecasting and investments.   Glenn Mooney  06:27 Yeah, and I guess if this thing is just think it through make it part of the new vocabulary, because it's something that we haven't thought about. And I'll be honest, we've all kind of pushed it off a bit. We know what's been coming, we've talked about it coming for quite a while, but we don't want to overreact on it, but we need to make it part of our thought process. So any decisions that we have to do in our buildings that involve, I'll say something mechanical things that building equipment, if you're making decisions on it factor in these target dates of 2030, or 40, or 50, or whatever it is in your world, or your owners world or your shareholders world, and make a part of your planning process. Every time you take a look at something and you have to make a business decision on it. Think about it, stay in tune, get informed, get some help if you need it, but help make wise decisions. Because these you only get one chance to do it right now.   Dan Seguin  07:17 What's a good game plan to adopt now, that will get results, but also save them money in the long run? Is it benchmarking and setting actionable, achievable goals that can be done along the way?   Glenn Mooney  07:34 Absolutely, just have a game plan, set yourself out a roadmap doesn't all have to be done this year. But a lot of times the goals are getting set for us. So our owners or pension funds that own buildings, or shareholders or governments or whatever institution, whoever we work for whoever's setting our marching orders, they're setting our goals for us, we don't want to get behind that ball, we want to be up in front of it. So yeah, find out where we are, let's get some get some help qualifying the impact of the options that you have before you, if you've got something, as I said earlier, you've got a piece of equipment that needs to be changed for whatever reason, figure out what the impact of it is. And it may not, it's a different business model right now, it may not always be that best cost solution or best payback solution. But we need to take a look at it, plan it out and avoid what they call lock in, don't if you replace something today, like for like and it doesn't fit into your carbon plan for the future, you've probably made a 20 year decision. So that piece of equipments gonna last 20 or 25 years, you don't get to make that decision again. So you've kind of locked in that missed opportunity for 20 or 25 years. So if you do the math on that now we're talking 2040/2045. So if people are putting pressure on you to reduce your greenhouse impact, and you're putting in equipment that is just like for like and not moving sticks, then those are things we need to think about. A big part of the carbon world is just it's reducing greenhouse gases. So a lot of times natural gas is great fuel. It's not as great for climate as maybe electricity is because we live in a very low carbon electricity, world and material here. So it's finding ways to maybe do better. And I'm not suggesting replacing gas boilers with electric boilers, because you probably can't make the business case for it. But you may want to look at things: We can talk about them heat pumps, things like that, that use electricity more efficiently, or use less gas. So that's one of the things too is always the less you use it but the less you pay for it, the less impact you have on the climate world.   Dan Seguin  09:45 Okay, Glenn, what types of investments would you recommend from the owners of Canada's largest commercial real estate properties and from municipalities? What should they invest in now versus later?   Glenn Mooney  09:59 Well, that's actually the heat pump is a good example. They don't fit everywhere. I'm not there's no one solution for this. It's just think about it. What are my options? So what are not but the other side of that equation are what are natural gas price is going to be? So the federal government's been pretty clear that they're moving up the carbon price on natural gas to $170 a tonne by 2030. That's not that far out. So what impact is that going to have on the natural gas impact? Because you're probably basing your decisions right now on what natural gas prices are today, you need to look at what they might be in the future. There is a focus on electrification. So what can I do to use electricity more efficiently in my building, and maybe less carbon negative products if you want to use that term. So things like the heat pumps, envelope opportunities, making your envelope using again, like using less, sealing things up better automation, controlling your building more, so that you're only using the energy you need to do the purpose it's intended to new age factor approaches. So again, those might be challenging business cases, but get some help making those decisions.   Dan Seguin  11:07 Now, looking for some tips, Glenn, what are some untapped or low hanging fruit options that folks either haven't thought about or considered that you would recommend?   Glenn Mooney  11:19 I always go to my, if you don't need to use it, use less of it. So that's the number one thing, the cheapest option is the pure conservation. Take a really good look at how you use energy in all forms. And find out ways that you can reduce the amount of energy use things like lighting, still a good option, like LED more efficient lighting, turning lights off when people aren't in spaces, HVAC, managing your automation system so that you're not using energy in hours that the building's unoccupied, we still need HVAC, we need to provide air and there's a lot of focus on that these days with little COVID situation but use it wise. Other technologies are coming along, I keep kind of going back to heat pumps, they they may be a more expensive option right now. But we're seeing a lot of movement in costing and we're seeing a lot of movement in performance. So there may be as a good business case to look at some of the newer technologies like that.   Dan Seguin  12:16 Great segue here. Certainly, technology changes quickly. But there's a lot of tech that exists today that can help building owners and municipalities prepare for the future. What are some out of the box ways that today's technology can help?   Glenn Mooney  12:36 I keep harping on cold climate heat pumps, we've we've done a lot of work with them lately. And just the the performance levels and even the last three, four or five years they've improved and they're being built for Canadian environment, we're not your typical environment globally, where minus 30 minus 40 some days in the wintertime. And what we're finding is we're getting these, these heat pumps are starting to perform well at minus 20, even minus 30, some of them even at minus 25. So we're we're getting a lot more efficiency out of these products. And I think with adoption, we're going to start to see the pricing come down. They already have quite a bit right now. And there's some really good technologies out there right now,   Dan Seguin  13:18 Glenn, the Government of Canada has just introduced new funding, and new initiatives to help support the commercial sector, promising $3 billion to establish a netzero accelerator fund to help large emitters reduce their emissions. What are some of the highlights? And what should clients know?   Glenn Mooney  13:40 So great programs in this, there's quite a few out I've just even in the last month, I've seen the three or four announcements of different programs for different applications. So great programs, a lot of money on the table, those are billions, not millions. So that 'b' is a big factor. So I think it's going to drive a lot of change. I think they'll be more programs coming as well. And they tend to be more sector specific or industry specific or building types. So you're gonna start to see more tailored programs, I think coming out. Bottom line, know what you want to do have your roadmap in place, plan for it, get a little bit of help, the one thing we are finding with a lot of these incentive programs is there needs to be a really good justification built at the start of it, which may take a little bit of energy modeling, creating a benchmark that they can actually assign the performance part of the incentive to. So that's quite often a little intimidating for customers. So that's one thing that we spent a lot of time doing. They are usually post project incentives. So you do need to put the capital aside. It's a call it a rebate or an incentive after the fact. So you want to make sure that you've done everything properly. You don't want to jeopardize the incentive. So read closely. They are there's some pretty good programs out there.   Dan Seguin  14:56 Now can you give us some examples of work Envari is doing and how you've helped clients reduce their energy usage and save money?   Glenn Mooney  15:06 Yeah, sure. The we're spending a lot of time right now doing deep retrofits. So a deep retrofit is to go into a building. Look at every way that it uses energy, find out how to reduce A) the amount of energy. So you need to, in lots of cases get at least a 25% reduction, which is a challenge, it's not easy. Also looking at what can I do with fuels to get more climate friendly, reduce the footprint and then reduce the GHG. So the deep retrofit, it starts with a study, it has to be integrated, everybody has to be involved, because it does affect operations in a lot of cases, too. So you need everybody at the table to, to work through it. It is a big process. And it looks at things like the envelope. Things like heating and cooling. So we've done a lot of work with electric boilers. And again, not not the need to replace everything on electric boiler. But there may be places where a smaller electric boiler serves a purpose. And it can be maybe dispatched on price signals when it's when it's cheaper to run electric boiler and make sense to run it then run it. Things like that, again, the heat pumps everywhere he comes through, they're kind of a unique thing because they provide you heat, but they also provide you cooling. So the air conditioning is part of that. But they also allow you to move heat around. So in commercial spaces or institutional spaces, heat pumps quite often can take heat from one area, put it somewhere else or take cool and put it somewhere. So it can be a whole ecosystem in and of itself in a building. We're doing three schools right now where it's driven by ventilation improvements based on COVID. But the heat pumps are there, we're offsetting baseboard heat with the heat pumps, we're adding cooling to a lot of spaces that didn't have room which is ideal in schools, we're putting in a lot of energy recovery ventilators or heat recovery ventilator, so let's not waste that heat. Let's not dump it outside. We need the fresh air. But let's use the heat that's in that air, not let it leave the building so that we're maximizing as much as we can. And that's all underpinned by a building automation system. So a lot of emphasis on good building automation, proper schedules, proper strategies, do everything you can to use as little as you can. And then lighting, we do a ton of lighting, indoor lighting, outdoor lighting, it's a big part.   Dan Seguin  17:22 Okay, let's now fast forward to post pandemic. What is your prediction for commercial real estate? Will people return to the office towers downtown like before? Ultimately, what do you hope these emission targets will achieve for companies and municipalities? Will they be required to innovate plan for a sustainable future and control costs?   Glenn Mooney  17:49 All of the above, it's going to be a challenge. It's it's we're in such a strange time right now. It's obviously it starts with a lot more awareness of ventilation in your buildings, people we didn't talk that much about it before, we just assumed that we had lots of fresh air, but COVID has really highlighted that and put a spotlight on it. So I think building owners have a lot of they need to pay a lot of attention to that because I think their tenants or their users or the community, whoever's in their buildings are demanding that and it's gonna be a struggle to balance those dollars because we've we've lost opportunities over the last year, we've incurred a lot of costs over the last year. Now you're asking what society is asking for us to spend more and more money to green our fleet of buildings and more value to our shareholders, our shareholder want to see us reduce our carbon footprints, as well. So it's going to be a lot of planning. And that's the thing is, everybody needs some help. There's a lot out there. I don't think anybody has all of the answers. I certainly don't. But I think it's going to take a little bit more thinking than we've kind of riden through in the last few decades with just in general with energy management. And again, I can't stress enough be careful with your decisions do not lock in equipment for 20 or 25 years and lose an opportunity to meet your long term goals.   Dan Seguin  19:08 Okay, Glenn, what's exciting you right now about the energy management and energy solutions industry   Glenn Mooney  19:17 it's it's just really disruptive right now it's it's a challenge to balance energy efficiency with electrification it's counterintuitive at times like it opposes each other you've got you know, you use less, use cheapest use, you know, reduce greenhouse gas is just so many variables out there now that we're all trying to manage. It's not an easy task. And the landscape, it's changing, it's going to change for the next few decades like this is I've done energy management for 30 years I've kind of seen progression from you know, I started in the days they were you know, they said go electric, which is, you know what is old is new again, but what they meant there is get your oil furnace out and go to an electric furnace will go electric Now has a totally different meaning to it. So the other thing is 2030. A lot of goals are set for 2030. That's only nine years out. And if anybody's been working for a few years, nine years flies by very quickly.   Dan Seguin  20:13 Okay, we're just about done here. Glenn. How about we close off with some rapid fire questions?   Glenn Mooney  20:21 Ready to go?   Dan Seguin  20:22 Glenn, what is your favorite word?   Glenn Mooney  20:29 I don't know if I have that. I know a lot of words through COVID. I haven't been crazy about like, pivot and something to do with COVID. I guess just optimism. I just, yeah, I like people that are optimistic. I like when people use that word. And that's the driving force behind what they're trying to do.   Dan Seguin  20:47 Now, what is the one thing you can't live without?   Glenn Mooney  20:52 Early on in COVID are working from home, I bought noise cancelling headphones. And I can't believe how valuable they have become in so many different aspects of my life, not just sitting in front of my computer for work, but going for a walk and just listening to music and just drowning out street noise.   Dan Seguin  21:09 I like that. What is something that challenges you?   Glenn Mooney  21:13 Oh, I'll make it recent COVID I find with COVID not just me, I think everybody, there's just so many balls up in the air. And I think the biggest thing is just try not to drop too many of them, you know, you're gonna drop some of them, pick them up as quick as you can and get it repaired.   Dan Seguin  21:28 Now, Glenn, if you could have one superpower, what would it be?   Glenn Mooney  21:35 Probably not to bore people. I find, you know, listening, listening teachers is a lot more than talking. And I guess I'm always trying to be cognizant of that. I'd rather I'd rather listen to what people say than to always found my opinion on them.   Dan Seguin  21:49 And if you could turn back time and talk to your 18 year old self, what would you tell him?   Glenn Mooney  21:56 People that you always think that don't get it? People like I am right now. They've actually seen a lot. They've learned a lot. They've tried a lot of things. They're not as dumb as you may think they are. But the other side of that is don't grow old and cynical, because that's the one thing I've really tried to avoid. Keep learning. Like I have 18 great nieces and nephews and I learned more from them than I learned from most people in my life. So stay young. Have fun.   Dan Seguin  22:21 Okay. And lastly, what do you currently find most interesting about your sector   Glenn Mooney  22:29 Change. I've, done energy management for over 30 years, I have never seen a rate of change like there is right now. And right behind is  a rate of technology development for energy storage, electric vehicles are coming we're all seeing that come quick - discussions like we've just had, we now have to rethink how we do things in our buildings. And in our life, just it's things are changing very quickly. It's gonna be a fun next decade.   Dan Seguin  22:54 Well, Glenn, we've reached the end of another episode of The ThinkEnergy podcast if somebody wanted to connect what is the best way   Glenn Mooney  23:02 our website Envari.com please reach out, reach out. Always happy to chat.   Dan Seguin  23:11 Thank you for joining us today. I truly hope you enjoyed this episode of The ThinkEnergy podcast. For past episodes, make sure you visit our website hydroottawa.com/podcast. Lastly, if you found value in this podcast, be sure to subscribe. Anyway, this podcast is a wrap. Cheers, everyone.

From policy to infrastructure to new and old buildings, how can we create cities that improve lives through deep carbon reductions, creating co-benefits for people and the planet? Thomas Mueller, President & CEO at Canada Green Building Council, joins us to share why this is a ‘critical decade' for the green building market and why green buildings are an actionable solution for helping Canada meet its goals for economic development, job creation, and GHG reductions. Related Content & Links: Thomas Mueller - President & CEO at Canada Green Building Council (CaGBC) CEO, Green Business Certification Inc Canada (GBCI CA) LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomas-mueller-4901b810/ Canada Green Building Council - https://www.cagbc.org/ --- Transcript: Dan Seguin  00:02 Hey everyone, welcome back to the ThinkEnergy podcast. As cities struggle with the pressure to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, better support green jobs, and hyper competitive real estate markets, they must find new and creative solutions that address short and long term issues. This includes creating a low or zero carbon future, which requires a step by step process to retrofit our existing communities and ensure all future builds are net zero carbon operations by 2050. From policy to infrastructure to new and old buildings. How can we create cities that improve lives through deep carbon reductions, creating co benefits for people and the planet. As of 2018, the green building industry added over 164,000 jobs, which is 55% greater than 2014. Over the same period, Canada's oil and gas extraction, mining and forestry industries stagnated in terms of job growth, they contracted by 2.8% and shed 7580 positions. Canadians have grown conscious of a broader range of social and environmental challenges. This shift and resulting public pressure have in turn spurred policymakers and industry leaders to raise the bar on sustainability, leading to increased government activity and higher standards for both building codes and industry certifications. As a result, green building certification programs are not only growing increasingly stringent, but also broadening in scope. Over the past decade, they have raised the bar on energy efficiency, renewable energy and sustainability practices. By extension, they have changed the way Canadians design, construct, maintain and operate buildings. A large percentage of Canada's buildings continue to be constructed without green building practices, or third party certification. building codes and municipal bylaws in provinces such as British Columbia are driving market transformation via new construction. So here's today's big question: is the existing building market really the most significant untapped opportunity for economic development, job creation, and GHG reduction in Canada? Our guest today leads the Canada Green Building Council national green building strategy, programs and standards, along with advocacy and policy initiatives. He's also the founding director of the Canada Green Building Council, and became president and CEO of the council in 2005. Dear listeners, please welcome Thomas Meuller. Thomas, you're a well known advocate for green buildings and sustainable community developments. Perhaps you can start by telling us a bit about yourself, What drew you to your current role? And what the Canada Green Building Council does?   Thomas Mueller  04:09 Thank you for inviting me. My name is Thomas Mueller. I'm the president and CEO of an organization called the Canada Green Building Council. And we've been advocating for green building practices since 2005. And, and we are really focusing on changing the practices in the billing industry ever since what really drew me to this to this work was that I, you know, I was inspired at the time and this is a long time ago by our common future, which was the Frampton report, as it was referred to the first mention of sustainable development and didn't take me long to realize that the building sectors, one of the sectors that have there's no other sector in the world has more impact, not just on climate change, but also how we live and our economy than the building sector. So that in the late 1990s, I was drawn to that sector to make changes, the other would help us reduce the environmental impact from that sector.   Dan Seguin  05:26 Now, how can we create cities that improve lives through deep carbon reduction, creating cool benefits for people and the planet? Why should we strive to make every building greener?   Thomas Mueller  05:43 So when you look at the building sector, or in cities, when we and it's getting better now, but when we use to cover climate change in this country, usually, if you watch CBC or CTV, it was always the one standing in front of big chimneys that would kind of admit, what I guess, was carbon emissions was big factories or it was transportation was standard on hot in front of a highway and just, you know, talk about how these two sectors transportation, and factories would just be the main culprit in climate change. The fact is, they're very high emitters. But actually, a building sector in Canada and globally is about 30%. And that includes both the operation of the building, so the heating, cooling, light lighting, but it also includes the embodied materials, so the body carbon materials, so that includes the energy used to make steel, the energy to use make any parts of the building. So it's a significant footprint that a building sector has. And the building sector also employs a lot of people. And we live in those buildings. So it's about the opportunity about carbon reduction. But it's also the opportunity that buildings are made for people. And we want to make sure that we balancing our environmental aspirations that we have a building in the in Canada green building, kind of context, that would help us to also look at how can buildings be good for people, because at the end of the day, that's what we build buildings for, to live, to learn to work. It's this combination of in the building sector, the impact, and the also the impact that buildings have on our lives. And on the environment. It's a combination of that. And so it's a great opportunity to combine those in green buildings, and also the green building sectors, the only one, we talked about climate change, and the other things is that actually has return on investment. And not just from the energy, but you have people in buildings that are more productive, that are healthier, that has a direct impact on his employer, for government, people are healthier, happier, more productive, that has a positive impact all around.   Dan Seguin  08:12 Okay, Thomas, wondering how important is it to balance our carbon reduction ambitions with health considerations, particularly during and after COVID-19? Do we have a clear path to show carbon leadership with healthier indoor environments, that future proof buildings, encourage innovation and drive job growth?   Thomas Mueller  08:36 Yes, we do. So I think we need to there are several questions here there Can we need to pick apart a little bit. One is that we absolutely need to balance our ambitions around carbon reduction, energy efficiency with human health and well being. Because we don't want to go back to the 1970s, where we can over insulate buildings and people get existing in those buildings, right. And just as a human being, I think we want to have access to to light when we work on those buildings to daylighting those buildings, we want to have access to fresh air, we want to have access to an environment that makes us feel healthy and relaxed, because then that's when we do our best, let's say in the working environment, or in a learning environment at school for children. Or when you're at home, you just want to make sure that the air and the light in your building are healthy. And so we want to make sure that how we design our buildings are on carbon because there's one trend where you want to have you know super insulated buildings and don't get me wrong. Energy Efficiency is very important when we get to low carbon non zero carbon buildings. But at the same time, we have to make sure that not only basic human needs are met that we want to enhance those needs in buildings. So we need to design them accordingly. So we need to balance those two. Now COVID has provided an extra kind of layer around how people think about buildings. Because before then I think most people didn't really think too much about, you know, ventilation, when you went to work ventilation or air flow, or those types of things, with COVID has come really into focus. Now that buildings need to be not only safe, but also be healthy. I think it's a great opportunity to rethink how buildings can be, not just from an environmental point of view, but also from a health point of view. The, I think the the final solution, on what, how buildings will operate after the pandemic is over I, after updating has kind of retreated, because I think it will be busy with us for a while, is still out. But definitely what we know is that more fresh air in buildings will be very important. And then there's filtration of that air and there will be humidification of the air and so on. So what the final solution is really depends also, you know, where you are, what kind of building it is, that solution is still out. But it's a great opportunity to look at and say what can buildings be from a health point of view, and not even just because of COVID. But beyond COVID, because we want healthier buildings, but we also want them to be low carbon, we want them to be water efficient, we want them to be materially efficient, we want to recycle. And that's something as the council we have been advocating for the last 20 years through our LEED building rating system is called Leadership in Energy, Environmental Design. We have advocated for that. So what we call that is holistic buildings that are good for the environment, they're good for people, and they're good for the economy, right? And buildings, only sector we can actually materialize that we can actually realize that you can invest in environmental solutions, you can invest in human based solutions, and you can have a return on investment. So in a way, you can eat, you can have your cake. And you can eat it too, when it comes to buildings and and, you know, environment in business in green buildings is the epitome of that where this comes together in a very meaningful and very outcome based way.   Dan Seguin  12:26 How do we accelerate to a netzero economy? How can we create efficiencies to reduce environment at risks?   Thomas Mueller  12:36 Do you think there's the several, I think several factors playing into that and how we can accelerate that is one. First of all, I think we need good government policy. And we see that with the current federal government, they have actually done more on on climate change policy than all the previous governments taken together as far as I'm concerned. And it's finally good to see that we have made not only policy, but there's also investment issues seen in that in the budget, the last budgets come out and announcements before that. There's been a real investment or investments being made in in helping the economy and the Environment and Climate to move towards low and zero carbon. Because I think that the goals are clear, right that the goals are ambitious. But they're not ambitious in Canada, they're ambitious globally. But this government has really made an effort. And that starts with trust before the budget, where minister McKenna announced the I don't know how much money was but it wasn't one point, I think $1.6 billion for underserved communities, smaller and underserved communities in terms of retrofit and new buildings and buildings supposed to be, you know, low or zero carbon was an announcement by the Canada infrastructure bank financing program of $2 billion to finance retrofits in the commercial sector, like large building retrofits. There was announcements in the budget around the workforce development because we can't forget we also need to invest in the workforce so that people are skilled. And we have enough people that actually can kind of renovate or rent retrofit and build those buildings. And then also that investment in Canadian economy, in producers to decarbonize, right. So it's nice to say, you know, you need products that have a lower carbon footprint. But, you know, you've been talking from extraction, to manufacturing, to installation to us to disposal, that's a long lifecycle, and you need to decarbonize the whole product, product supply chain, in order to get there. So we so we have that part. So practice, government, and we also see replicated provincial level and you see it replicated at the local level. Many municipalities as you know, I've announced a climate emergency - great. But now, it's always the challenges. It's not just that you plan and you announce, but what about the implementation? How can you make that happen now, in buildings, again, is a natural go-to. Because government is the biggest owner of buildings in our country, collectively, the federal government owns a lot of buildings, municipalities and provinces all around the building. Federal government has announced for its own building that they want to build the buildings to zero carbon by 2030, or their own buildings, that they want to retrofit the existing buildings to low carbon performance. They're the only one to lease office space on leased buildings that is zero carbon buildings by 2030. So they take a lot of steps also, as an owner as a procurer of products and services, to go that route. But the second part, then is the private sector, we have to get the private sector on board. Because remember that you cannot, you cannot regulate your way out of this. We actually need the private sector needs to be at the table and actually invest in the low current economy. And for us, on the building side, we really see that happen. Many of our largest members in the council, large commercial real estate owners have invested in green buildings in a massive way, in their portfolio of buildings. We see governments across the country have federal government, provincial governments, local governments using LEED and other standards that we that we provide for their own buildings. So but the private sector mezzanine is really important. And this whole aspect of and I'm sure you've been following that is around sustainable finance, that all of a sudden, not all of a sudden, but companies across North America and abroad have realized that climate is a risk. And that if it's left unchecked, it will actually detrimental to their business. And they have started to shift their investment patterns into into the direction that mitigates carbon emissions, but also investments into resiliency, building up the resiliency of the building stock of the building stock. So you see a real shift that's happening now on a financial side as well. And that's very much business driven. So those two really have to come together. Because if business beliefs, and I see it happen, our business believes that climate risk is real, which they do. And they believe that they can actually get a return on the investment by investing in climate solutions, then this can move actually fought their way quickly, supported by good policy and good regulation, to raise the whole ship.   Dan Seguin  17:55 For this question, Thomas, could you share with our listeners examples of how does your council make inroads towards reducing the environmental impact of the build environment.   Thomas Mueller  18:09 So we as the council for just so everybody understands that. So we, we continue to be an environmental organization. But we very much industry led, so our board and our members represent a cross section of the of the green building or the building industry, from designers, to owners, to manufacturers, to investors, to developers, and so on. And that's by design. Because we need all the different professional, the different expertise and knowledge to different sectors and sub sectors at the table. What we do is and how we started off, and what we still do is we actually set advanced standards for buildings. So LEED is an example of that. That another one is the zero carbon standard that we launched, our over three years ago, we set advanced standards for buildings that go well beyond the building code. And these standards are set in a way with the industry. So we working with the leaders in the industry, the set of standards, because we want to have standards that work in industry. And that work well in industry. So the industry feels they can build those buildings to that level, they can invest on those buildings, and it's actually possible, but there is depending on how far you want to go. There's considerable amount of stretching there. So it's not being you're not satisfied with the status quo. So one way is we setting standards and then we also those those building owners and developers that use our standards, we actually certify these projects, so we make sure that the meeting of standards, so we have a verification, quality assurance process to make sure it's being met and depending on what they achieve. We recognize them publicly for that achievement. In Canada After the US, Canada is the largest use of LEED in the world. LEED exists nine in 200 countries, Canada was the first adopter of LEED. We're currently about 1.5 billion square feet in our LEED program alone, across the country coast to coast to coast. Any climate, any billing time, you can imagine in our program, we have certified close to 5000 of those buildings now. setting a new standard for buildings, but in a holistic way. So energy, carbon water waste, sites, how we treat the site habitat. And then also, of course, as we talked about human health and transportation as well. So this is one way and then Mr. Pointing is that this standard through education, we are credit professionals. We organize events, like our national conference every year, and also very specific industry events. And then we also convene leaders in the industry. And we do a considerable amount of effort activity, advocating with all levels of government, and also with the private sector as well, all with the focus to moving the needle forward. So it's really it's a we have a very comprehensive approach on how to move the industry forward and education in that we trained professionals. But we also have the workforce development, as I mentioned before, that we need to train, from the trades to the architects in sufficient numbers, so we can deliver green building at scale. Scale matters a great deal.   Dan Seguin  21:40 Okay, you've alluded to this a little earlier, with buildings generating almost 30% of Canada's GHG emissions. When construction materials, processes and operations are considered. Why are green buildings an actionable solution for helping Canada meet its global change commitments.   Thomas Mueller  22:01 Going back to what I said earlier, no initiative focuses very much on transportation. And I'm all for transit systems. I take transit every day, and I never drive to work. And so and obviously, the large emitters need also be targeted. But the fact is that we cannot reach our climate change goals without addressing the building sector is not just in Canada, I think it's recognized globally, particularly over the last five years, did buildings play a huge role in not just new buildings, again, we can build our way out of the climate crisis, we need to actually really focus on retrofit, and that includes a large building retrofit. So it counts as a substantial program around large building retrofits of those buildings, over 25,000 square feet, that they need to be retrofitted at scale in the 1000s. Actually, and that's actually miracle other jurisdictions, if you go into in the European Union, they dedicate is something like a thing was 230 billion euros to retrofitting buildings across the member states. So it's called as part of the new green deal that they have in, in Europe. And that's significant. So it just shows you that without the building sector, we will not achieve our climate change goals. It's impossible. So there's a realization now there is now investment in terms of policy and grant and funding programs and regulations. But we still have a half a ways to go. Because in Canada, we have like last time, we have about 250,000 buildings, and millions of millions and millions of homes that need to operate a lot better than they are right now.   Dan Seguin  23:49 Now, Thomas wondering if you can expand on these next questions. Can green buildings become an economic driver? Can green buildings stimulate growth in the green building sector? And lastly, how can a green recovery that prioritizes green buildings accelerate the post COVID-19 economic rebound?   Thomas Mueller  24:17 It's all great. Good questions. Very good questions that I can answer. And I have actually some figures for you because we did just that we actually did a last year, we released a green building report that we did it was for the second time and it's called the Canada's green building engine. And it talks about the critical decade ahead leading up to 2013. But it also talks about the economic recovery. Just to give you a sense then is that in 2014 we had close to 300,000 full time employees in the green building industry. So these were individuals that worked on green buildings in Canada in the two years and four years after that, so by 2018, this has had increased by 55%. And it was with very little, just a bit of government intervention. So 55, those numbers of jobs actually exceed the jobs that you have in forestry and logging in oil and gas mining, and some of the support activities to support the oil and gas industry. Because they had by 2018, to about 260 to 263,000 jobs, versus the 460,000 shops in the green building industry, I just wanted to point it out, because people always get the the idea that these are this is one of our biggest employers, when in fact, the green buildings team employs a lot of people. Now, we estimated that if we continue with business as usual, by 2030, so without intervention, you just, you know, leave it by own devices. The by 2030, will have about 940,000, direct green building jobs, and close to 95 billion indirect GDP from green for green building industry. And we will eliminate 22.5 million tonnes of co2 in Canada. If the government were to invest in we have seen some of the investment this can be aggregated up quite significantly. If the government were to invest significant amount of money, which we're seeing now, these green building jobs grew up to about 1.41 million jobs. And the carbon reduction could more than double close tomorrow, just about 50 million tons. Now, that's significant in terms of just economic growth. And what plays into that is also that you create not just jobs, but he also creates skilled jobs. And he also jobs as an opportunity to skill chops, across the board in particular trades can kind of go spilling industries actually using a jobs even before a pandemic to the retirement. And this is real opportunity to bring new people into the industry, young professionals in the industry in skilled jobs. Because constructing and building low carbon fuel carbon buildings requires an enhanced skill set we currently don't have across the board. It also provides an opportunity to be more inclusive, and more diverse now workforce bring parts of our society into this workforce that currently does not participate in active way. Women construction industry is notorious for not having broad employment of women or underrepresented communities. So it's a real opportunity. But it's really opportunity to grow the economy because I think, post pandemic, I think it would be unfortunate that we go back to the business as usual. I think it's a real opportunity to pivot and to be ambitious and say, What is the Canada that we actually want? What do we want our buildings what we want our neighborhoods? What What, what do we want our cities to look like in terms of carbon in terms of livability, in terms of environmental footprint terms of our economy, and this is the real opportunity for government to invest because we know now that when money is needed, it can be made available to invest in something we have learned from a pandemic, when there's the climate crisis, if you and I'm you know, I'm an optimist, but you often hear the climate crisis, it will be way worse than anything that happened on the COVID-19. And the likelihood is very high, that that will be the case. But we have an opportunity to change course. And if we change because we have to do it now. We can't wait another 10 years, if we don't get to our 2030 goals, we certainly will not get to our 2015 goals. So we really have to have all hands on deck and move that keep the move the needle forward and I think, in the course of that grew our economy and develop new jobs, that drops and low carbon economy. Now,   Dan Seguin  29:33 let's bring out your crystal ball and set the dial to 2030. And the question is as follows. How much difference will building be making to our progress to net zero goals?   Thomas Mueller  29:49 Well, I think that if I look to 2030, what would I want to have accomplished? I would think by 2030 I would want all new buildings over a certain size, they say 25,000 square feet to build zero carbon performance, we can already do that now, we already have 25 buildings in Canada that are zero carbon certified and another 50 plus in the pipeline. So we really can do that now. So that's one. The other one is I would want a large building retrofit. at scale, we estimated and don't say that that's a prime number. And you know, we talk to economists, and everybody has their own numbers, but they're all relatively close. But you have to look at it that over the next 10 years, we probably have to retrofit anywhere between 50 and 60,000 buildings, over 25,000 square feet to be 20 to 40% more carbon efficient after the retrofit than now. So that's a big number. It's, it's a big number, but it's not insurmountable. And then the third one is where we'd really like to see is have to work for us build up have a more diverse and more workers in the building industry, that is more representative of Canada. And, and I think that would be really something really a very desirable goal. And also to expand buildings, not just to the Green buildings is a little bit the perception, and I think it's not deserved, but it's mainly into urban centers, and so on. I think, with the announcement of the primary federal government also present small and under underserved communities, I would like to see green buildings all over the country, I like to see green buildings in neighborhoods that are considered to be on the low income side. Because I think my in my books, I think the people that are the least able financially, should actually have the greenest buildings, they should be demands, the buildings are the healthiest. And they should have buildings that cost less to operate or to rent or to live in than any other demographic in Canada. So I think that you're expanding that concept. And you know what, the already plenty of affordable housing projects that have been built to LEED. They've been schools and built to zero carbon. It's not like that. But I think it's goes back to scale. So in 10 years from now, I think I would just like green buildings everywhere, not just in a big urban regions in Canada, but everywhere. And this is really the challenge. And then it becomes not just, oh, it's a green building something different. It's just becomes a part of fabric of our lives that yes, you know, we have high expectations from our buildings, when it comes to environmental and health performance.   Dan Seguin  32:58 Interesting. Now, let's keep on looking into the future here. What are some of the emerging technologies, innovations that hold much promise for the future of energy efficient, and net zero homes? What's exciting new right now about this industry?   Thomas Mueller  33:18 What is excited me about my the industry is that there continues to be a movement for it, because the building sector is always considered to be very traditional and slow moving. But it's actually the green building sector that is moving forward very, very quickly, with big companies being at the table making decisions around the quality, and just the scale of what they want to do with their buildings that they own or control. So I think very excited about that, and just the technology innovation, in terms of new technology. I think that overall, for carbon emission reduction, we do see a lot of technology coming up now around, you know, that are connected to electrification of buildings, the buildings need to be electrified. And that within that context, you'll see you know, more highly insulated buildings. You see a buildings that either have at least part of the renewable energy on site. But also in Canada, we have the advantage to take advantage of our green electricity in many parts of the country. And in that regard, you know, heat pumps often come you know, to the forefront is a technology that is having its day now and in the future. Of course, it's still more expensive than traditional way of heating and cooling buildings. But there's that opportunity and I'm also a big fan of geothermal. Generally to exchange system, your thermal systems as a way to maybe not on a single family home, but on community development. So I think the district aspect of what we're doing, I think is really important to that, how we look into that because there's all despite the pandemic there's a lot of building going on in Canada and the big projects that are being planned in you know, in Ottawa, you have Zibi, you have the, the National Capital Commission is developing this piece of land law pipe in France, where they're very ambitious targets in Toronto and Mississauga and all over the country depicted here in Vancouver, we have big developments going in south of the Broad Street Bridge. One on native land, indigenous land, the very ambitious and how they think about what these communities could be and housing 1000s and 1000s of people. So, these are district systems, I think we need to, it's good to think about building by building, but we also need to think about what neighborhood and community scale and how do you transform entire communities to be low carbon performance, right. And so district systems definitely come into play here and district system that of course are on renewable energy, or connected to a clean energy, clean energy grid, and BC 95%, carbon free, Ontario as a cleaner Quebec, and Alberta has plans to, to get off, you know, coal based electricity. So it's all going in the right direction,   Dan Seguin  36:37 Acting as a voice of the green building industry, your organization has been advocating for green building policy with all levels of government and the private sector across Canada. Have your efforts impacted green building standards?   Thomas Mueller  36:53 Yes, it absolutely has. Because when, when we did the rating systems in Canada, they be using a voluntary, so they're not they're not in code, per se. They're done by the owners voluntarily, in our rating systems reference best available standards. So they're not just, you know, written the base of a napkin, this is a very solid, very credible, based on very credible standards. But the way they often many instances, go beyond the code. And what that does is in the past, I mean, continue to do that with a zero carbon buildings, it actually shows those that are in charge of developing the code, that these buildings can be built now at a reasonable cost. And that's very important, because in bringing it down to reasonable cost is necessary so that the code officials can say, you know, we can take that step now. Because everybody in the industry can do it now at a reasonable costs, because the no power is available, the products are available, technology is available. So they can probably and we have been told that in the past, they were able to take the code further, based on the voluntary action that the industry has taken that we could have done otherwise. And that's a really important role for the counselor as well to continue to push the envelope to push it forward to what's doable. And we've been very successful at that over the last since 2004. And so that's a very important role. But the regulations at the same time, also have become more ambitious. So we look for ticket cities like city of Toronto, City of Vancouver, they are probably more ambitious codes on what they would like how to like regulate new buildings. And now they are also particularly have started to also look at existing buildings. And the federal government is planning also to develop a retrofit code, which will be the first of its kind in Canada to really start addressing building retrofit. So again, through our work, we hope to continue to inform codes and what's possible from a kind of a market perspective. And then also what's possible from from a technical and technology perspective as well. So we see that as our role, we are kind of your breaking new paths when it comes to buildings. And we have members and stakeholders that are very committed to this idea to this mission, and to use their skills to make that happen. So that's one of the core roles that we have and we kind of quantify that then through our own standards. They make sure it's done right. And and it's it's it's measurable and you can report out on it. Let's try As parents, it's very important to us. Now,   Dan Seguin  40:03 let's deep dive, and maybe even explore some of the key market trends and drivers that are enabling and accelerating Canada's shift to high efficiency, zero emission buildings, and how could these impact Canada's green building industry.   Thomas Mueller  40:23 Now, the big shifts are clearly the recognition of climate risk by the private sector, which is also addressed in what they call ESG - environmental, social and governance frameworks. And also expressed as we talked earlier, about sustainable investment, sustainable finance. You know, Mark Carney is one of the big players in this globally when it comes to financial disclosures, addressing climate risk, but also sustainable finance. So this is a big trend, that means the private sector stepping up and coming to the table, investing in things that actually mitigate carbon or eliminate carbon or reduce climate risk altogether. The second one is, of course, that the policy around carbon, we heard a couple of weeks ago that our targets are moving up now to more 40-45% by 2030, being consistent with the United States, and being consistent with the global emergence of what the current target should be. And you know, timing matters, right? It's climate change. But in Canada, and particularly North accelerating faster than we thought. So acceleration requires more focused and more targeted action. The third piece of that is, of course, a carbon pricing. carbon pricing, as it leaves it up to the business sector, and everyone else to decide how they want to reduce the carbon is a very effective mechanism to achieve corporate action across the economy. It's even though the carbon price of $50 it's a step in the right direction, but we need to actually be moving up $150-$170, or potentially even higher over the next 1015 years, is a, it's a very important aspect of driving the economy forward when it comes to carbon reduction. Because let's face it, there is a price on carbon that we already paying, in terms of infrastructure, in terms of human health, there's all kinds of impacts, and there needs to be a price on carbon to achieve that reduction. So it's the sustainable finance. It's the policy, it's the the price on carbon. And, and then the other one, the big market trends to that claim to carbon, how we started off our conversation today is this balance with health and wellness, health and wellness has risen very much to the top. And Canadians, like most people will care about the health and well being may very well be a high quality of life in Canada. And they care about health and well being and I think the green building agenda, the green buildings can actually help to enhance the health and well being of Canadians. By meeting the environmental aspects of the that that lie before us. Now, when it comes to in mind, we always focus on carbon, but there's so many biodiversity there is, you know, air pollution, there is water pollution, there is toxic substances in the environment. I mean, the list goes on and on.   Dan Seguin  43:55 I'd like to visit or let's say revisit, what is the role of certifications and building codes? And do you feel they've raised the bar on energy efficiency, renewable energy, and sustainability practices?   Thomas Mueller  44:12 Oh, Green Building Standards certainly have done that they have raised that considerably. And it's really up to the project owner to the developer to decide how far they want to go. But we have raised considerably the codes now doing that as well. A probably one of the best examples being used right off now is the BC step code, where they actually give some predictability in British Columbia, when the codes requirement will increase so the steps one to five currently, it's step one, and then insert meeting goal step two and sign up so that the industry has a good line of sight what the expectations are with regards to increasing the the building performance, environmental performance, and so on. So I think that's a really good tool. And generally, the code, particularly the local level getting more ambitious for those municipalities that can actually go beyond the provincial code. And federally, like I said, the codes are moving towards near net zero. And also there's also be a retrofit code. So there's movement there, they the the international code is always a bit challenging because it can be developed naturally with together with the provinces, but then the provinces still have to adopt it. And that sometimes can take time. In some ways can take years, provinces can make modifications to the code. So if I can give one message with the code, the codes are moving up and being more ambitious. But at the same time, I think the pace of adoption means a great deal. Because the code is on a five year cycle. It takes you five years to update the code. And then you put it into the industry and the provinces have to adopt it, you can lose a lot of time, till actually the first building is built to the code so that the code development cycle and the implementation cycle, the adoption cycle has to speed up. Because it can be like sometimes can be a decade before the first building is built to a new code. And we don't have that time. And I think it's 2030. So I think that's something that really needs to speed up across the country.   Dan Seguin  46:37 Okay, let's have a bit of fun here. Thomas. How about you close us off with some rapid fire questions? Okay, here's the first one What is your favorite word?   Thomas Mueller  46:50 responsibility   Dan Seguin  46:52 What is one thing you can't live without?   Thomas Mueller  46:58 trees   Dan Seguin  46:59 Okay, that's cool. Okay. What is something that challenges you?   Thomas Mueller  47:05 status quo   Dan Seguin  47:07 Now, if you could have one superpower, what would it be?   Thomas Mueller  47:12 I would restore ecosystems globally.   Dan Seguin  47:18 Great response here. If you could turn back time and talk to your 18 year old self? What would you tell him, Thomas?   Thomas Mueller  47:29 I would tell him that it probably comes easier that he would tell him to be non conforming. And that you can actually create a different future.   Dan Seguin  47:39 And lastly, what do you currently find most interesting in your sector?   Thomas Mueller  47:44 I find it interesting that the billing industry tends to be viewed as a traditional. But there's a whole segment and a growing segment of the industry that's driving innovation now. So I think that's a big shift in an industry that's been changed very, very passively change very, very slowly.   Dan Seguin  48:07 Thomas, I hope you had fun. I had a blast. I'm sure our listeners will truly enjoy this interview. Cheers. Thank you. Thank you for joining us today. I truly hope you enjoyed this episode of The think energy podcast, and for past episodes, make sure you visit our website hydroottawa.com/podcast. Lastly, if you found value in this podcast, be sure to subscribe. Anyway, this podcast is a wrap. Cheers, everyone.

According to a recent survey by chartered professional accountants Canada 34% of Canadians have fallen victim to scams and frauds. Sadly, the energy industry is no stranger to the world of scam artists looking to make quick money from unsuspecting energy consumers. Here with us to discuss the criminal minds behind utility scams is Jared Lawrence, Vice President of Revenue Services and Metering at Duke Energy. He is also the founder and executive committee chair of an organization known as Utilities United Against Scams - a sort of Justice League for the energy industry. Tune in to learn how to protect yourself and your loved ones. Related Content & Links:  Jared Lawrence - Vice President of Revenue Services and Metering at Duke Energy LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaredalawrence/  Duke Energy - https://www.duke-energy.com/  Utilities United Against Scams - https://www.utilitiesunited.org --- Transcript: Dan Seguin  00:02 Hey, everyone, welcome back to another episode of The ThinkEnergy podcast. Catch me if you can. Fyre festival, the greatest party that never happened. The Wolf of Wall Street and catfish. We love to watch movies about scammers, grifters and con artists, but we never want to be on the receiving end of their schemes. Yet, according to a recent survey by chartered professional accountants Canada 34% of Canadians have fallen victim to scams and frauds. And the Canadian anti fraud centre reports that in 2019, nearly 45,000 Canadians lost $96 million to scammers. It may or may not be surprising. But the energy industry is no stranger to the world of scam artists looking to make quick money from unsuspecting energy consumers like you and me. A scam is reported to the Better Business Bureau every 15 minutes. of the 30 different types of scams tracked and reported, the average financial loss to a utility customer is a whopping $500. And as we've seen firsthand in the energy industry, fraudsters are becoming more and more sophisticated. evolving with time. Scammers like to take advantage of opportunities throughout the covid 19 pandemic. We've seen an increase in their efforts through a call, text, email, and even show up in person at a customer's home and place of business to intimidate and threaten. A popular tactic includes posing as a representative of a local utility like Hydro Ottawa and demanding immediate payment for a supposedly overdue account. To add stress and pressure, they threatened to disconnect power within the hour if they do not get payment. Frantic customers already reeling from the pandemic and possibly economic hardships fall victim to these convincing criminals and their pressure tactics by purchasing prepaid debit cards, gift cards, any form of cryptocurrency, or third party digital payments mobile applications, utility companies have ramped up efforts to educate customers so they can be aware of the dangers of utility scams and avoid them. Hydro Ottawa for instance, has partnered with other large distributors in the province like Hydro One, Toronto hydro, and Alectra utilities over the last couple of years to help spread the word far and wide when a scam happens. So that as many regions as possible are notified. So here is today's big question: How can utility companies protect their customers from increasingly sophisticated schemes and fraud? Is the answer a united front? And on a personal note? Is this my first true crime podcast? We shall see. Joining me on today's show is Jared Lawrence, Vice President of revenue services and metering at Duke Energy, one of the largest electric power holding companies in the US. Duke Energy provides electricity to 7.7 million customers in Florida, the Carolinas and parts of the Midwest. Jared is also the founder and executive committee chair of an organization known as utilities united against scams - a sort of Justice League for the energy industry if you will. Batman. I mean Jared, welcome to the show. Now Jared, scams are such a big problem in our industry that there's a utility Scam Awareness Day. And National Scam Awareness Week. That's how big the problems gotten. What can you tell us about utilities united against scams and your vision when you started it?   Jared Lawrence  05:25 Well, that's an excellent question. And there's actually a Hydro Ottawa connection that I will, I'll get to in a second, Dan. Really, utilities unite against scams started as a result of an internal investigation at my company, we were hosting our CEO, actually, in our call center where both our customer care agents as well as the back office employees report to me, we're having a q&a session with our CEO. And one of the customer care specialists raised her hand and said, Ms. Good, I'm, I'm really concerned, we have a lot of customers calling up about scammers. And they're convinced that these scammers actually have their information. What are we doing about this? and this was back in 2015. So this was on this was in the context of a number of high profile breaches with major retailers that were in the media. And so this was something we were definitely heightened, had a heightened sensitivity to. And she actually looked at me as as one of the two leaders in the room and said, "Yes, Jared, what are we doing about that?" I said, "Well, we're not doing anything, right now. But we're going to start tomorrow." And so we had actually, we commissioned a SWAT team internally to make sure that there were no data breaches, no breaches with our vendors, no, inside bad actors who were sharing information with scammers. And it became apparent very quickly, that these scammers did not actually have customer information. They were just brilliant social engineers, and all of our information networks were completely secure. So we got to the end of that effort, it took about, you know, three weeks to do that intensive investigation. And then I said to the team "Well now what?" we're not going to leave these folks, you know, our customers out there to fend for themselves against these criminals. What do we learn from this? And what can we do about it. And it became apparent to me pretty quickly that, that this is a problem of international scale, but each utility was attacking it as an individual entity. And we would have so much more presence, so much more of a voice in the public policy space, if we joined together as the as the influential industry that serves the public, and use our clout to basically push for change and better protect our customers. So that's not the concept of utilities in order to get scams was born. I made the pitch to a number of attendees at CS week. And so for many folks in the utility industry are aware that this week is the the customer service focus conference for utility professionals. This was back in in the spring of 2016, then, and immediately the cause essentially sold itself there were 25 utility organizations represented in the room and every single one of them came up to me afterwards, and expressed interest in becoming part of this vision of this industry effort. But it was actually in a breakfast conversation, later on during the conference with Dave McKendry, who's retired from Hydro Ottawa, who's become a friend of mine through our board work on CS week. And he pulled me aside he said, Jared, I've been thinking a lot about your utilities united against scams effort. And I suggest maybe you consider a national campaign. And, and the fact that utilities across North America are coming together, to work together for this specific event, this specific campaign that's newsworthy in and of itself. And I think, Jared that if you if you take that approach, you you will be able to attract so much more interest in this cause, and, frankly, so much more membership, and he was spot on. I thought it was a fantastic suggestion. We made that kind of the centerpiece of our first few months of existence back in 2016, culminating with our national utility Scam Awareness Day and actually utility Scam Awareness Week in November of 2016. The US House of Representatives of course, recognized us with the declaration of national utility Scam Awareness Day. And we went from 25 utility organizations that expressed interest at that first conference to 89 members by the time we get to that campaign in November, and since then, we've grown to where we are today at exactly 150 across the US and Canada. So it's grown beyond what I honestly could have expected or hoped for, but certainly not beyond that vision of the industry coming together to protect our customers against us against this very important Scourge.   Dan Seguin  09:58 Very interesting, Jared. What types of scams are appearing most often? Can you provide some real life examples? And has the global pandemic altered scam activity and its frequency?   Jared Lawrence  10:14 Excellent question. And so at the core, the scam that was the main focus of utilities back in 2015, when I started our investigation at Duke Energy and, and it remains today, it's that classic disconnection threat scam. So a customer gets a call from out of the blue from somebody purporting to be a representative of the utility. And they state that due to some sort of problem with the account or some sort of problem with a payment being returned by a bank or some, you know, some fabricated excuse like that, the customer's account is now overdue, and there is a disconnection technician in route to turn off the customer's power. Usually it's power. Sometimes it's other utilities, but almost, it's almost always power within the next 30 to 45 minutes. And so the customer needs to act they need to go purchase typically a prepaid card and call the scammers back with that information within the next 30 to 45 minutes to prevent disconnection. That was their bread and butter back in 2015. It's still our bread and butter today. What's interesting is that we've seen little variations in scammers. They're attuned to what's happening in in their market, so to speak, and how utilities and law enforcement and others are reacting to their tactics. And so they've tried certain things. So for example, they're one of the things that we saw at Duke Energy was that when our smart meters were being deployed in each of our territories, and in our, in our six electric states, the scammers at various times would attempt to kind of take they change the tactic and focus on a meter deposit that the customer had failed to pay something that wouldn't typically show up on a bill and that kind of thing. Kind of trying to capitalize on that on the headlines associated with the utility. And with utility at that particular time, those didn't work very well. So we tend to see the attempt to collect that meter deposit, that scam fell off pretty quickly. We've seen the scammers attempt text and email. sporadically, those don't seem to work very well either, because they don't have the same level of immediacy that a phone call has. So those those tend to flare up at times and then die out on their own. We've seen the scammers explore different payment channels. So we've had some customers report that the scammers have asked them to pay in Bitcoin, which, of course is absurd, because I don't know about Hydro Ottawa, but The Duke Energy certainly does not accept Bitcoin. We've seen them requests zelle transfers, which are actually traceable. So that would work very well for the banks. We've seen a several scammers recently try and use cash app. But their bread and butter has historically been prepaid cards and you know, one or two prepaid cards in particular brands of which I won't mention on on this podcast. But there there are one or two that stand out above all the rest is being particularly susceptible to fraud.   Dan Seguin  13:25 Are there any specific population groups who are frequently targeted? How can we, as a community offer better support to these groups? What's the best line of defense?   Jared Lawrence  13:40 So, you know, again, as with everything that I've seen in the six years that I've been heavily engaged in this topic, they tend to go in cycles. And so in the beginning, it seemed to be random, the victims, the targets seemed to be random. And so since it was random, there was you know, statistically the vast majority of utility customers are residential. And so there was a heavy focus on residential customers. What we started to see is and obviously, I've never spoken with a scammer to validate this. But what we started to see was that the scammers started to use tools, probably online maps, you know, simple tools like Google Maps, etc. to determine what were the businesses in a particular area and how close were they to some of the retail outlets that sold the prepaid cards that they like to use. And the reason they were focusing on businesses is if if they caught up a residential customer, and they would say to a residential customer, you're behind on your bill, you I was two months Well, they really couldn't ask for more than you know, a couple 100 bucks because a typical residential customer knows that they're your average utility bills not going to be that much more than 100 bucks unless it's the heat of the summer that are the depths of winter, but they recognize that they started calling restaurants, veterinary clinics and and others that are fairly energy intensive that they could ask for 1000s of dollars, and it would work because at the same time they would they would get into a rhythm where they would call these particular businesses during what they knew to be, for example, a restaurants busiest part of the day during the lunch hour, a veterinarians busiest type of day, right mid afternoon when they might have had dogs and cats under sedation, a drycleaners busiest time of the day, right around five o'clock in the you know, post the rush hour period when people are dropping in to pick up their dry cleaning, things like that. The scammers became very intelligent about, again on that social engineering aspect of focusing in on the times when their victims were most vulnerable. What we've seen what we've tended to see and I do think that these scammers are paying attention and noticing the impacts from utilities united against scams, in that over the course of the last few years, we have forged a partnership with an organization called Somos, which is the toll free administrator, the toll free number administrator for basically all toll free phone lines across North America. And, and what started happening was that we were getting there, you know, through this partnership, we were having the scammers when 1-800 numbers disconnected. And the scammer started to recognize this and so they have migrated toward more of a robo calling model now, where they call up and they say instead of asking a customer to call back, they say press this number to speak to you know, press one to speak to somebody about your about your delinquent bill, for example. And, and because they're using robo calls now, it's much more random again. And so we're seeing a shift back toward a higher purpose preponderance of residential customers. Now all along we have seen particularly with utility scam, that Spanish speaking populations and Spanish speaking businesses in particular have been more vulnerable. And I think there's two reasons for this: The first of which is that in my conversations with law enforcement in my direct conversations with these scammers, because I talk to them a lot when I'm calling up to validate that they're using fraud numbers, I call them up and try and play along and pretend I'm a victim. They tend to be they seem to be originating from Spanish speaking countries, most likely in Latin America, and law enforcement has corroborated that. And sometimes when I call them up, they're actually answering the line in Spanish, meaning that they are targeting Spanish businesses in particular, at that particular time, and they seem to be much more fluent in Spanish than they are in English at times as well. So and so the reason that we think that these, this customer group is more vulnerable is because there is a, there's a natural language barrier between the routine communications that they would receive from utility versus the communications that they're receiving from these scammers. And therefore, that might cut through some of the awkwardness that a that a native English speaker might pick up on if they were being contacted by somebody who isn't an eight native English speaker, originally versus being a native Spanish speaker. And the second two is that there just seems to be a little bit of less of a reflex of distrust amongst, amongst Spanish speaking businesses and Spanish speaking community and a little bit of a greater trust in official communications, or official sounding communications rather than a reflex to immediately distrust something that is, hits them out of the blue. And so we have seen a disproportionate number of Spanish speaking businesses being targeted and showing up on our victims list.   Dan Seguin  19:00 So in general, Jared, is there anything customers can do to pro actively guard themselves or their loved ones against scams?   Jared Lawrence  19:10 Great question. So I am a big fan of these anti robo call services such as no Robo, it's the one that we use in our house. I'm not a paid spokesman for no robo. But I do actually I have through the scammer come to know the founder and president of No Robo. And, and so that, and from the car registries that he shared with us, we are seeing that they're doing a good job of blocking a lot of these scam calls that are coming from, they're coming from these criminals. So I recommend that because that'll just reduce the likelihood that households or businesses that these calls are making it through the filters in the first place. The second thing is really just to know the signs so you know the basics signs are that a utility. The first communication you get from a utility about a potential delinquent bill or a problem with a payment is not going to be 30 minutes before you're disconnected. And a true utility representative is not going to insist on one particular type of payment, they're not going to make you drive down the street to a local retail outlet, get a specific thing tell you not to talk to the clerk and then force you to come back and make that payment quickly. And if you express any doubts at all about the legitimacy of the call, a legitimate utility representative will be more than happy to have you contact the utility directly using the published number, the public contact channels on your actual bill versus what they give you. Whereas a scammer is going to resist all of those because they know once you do that the gig is up. So that's really those are the key there, you want to want to reduce your vulnerability or your your exposure to scam communications in the first place. And then if they do get through, just be highly educated on the signs.   Dan Seguin  21:12 Okay, great segue to this next important question. What are some ways to identify a utility scammer over the phone? Maybe via text message? And the scariest of them all at your door? What are the red flags to look out for and the best way to deal with them?   Jared Lawrence  21:36 So again, I did I think that the number one thing to keep in mind is that it is very rare that you will get an urgent communication from your utility, about a billing problem. That's it with disconnection being imminent, out of the blue, within the next 45 minutes, that that will be the first communication. So a utility scammer typically is is somebody who contacts you with a sense of urgency, and there's a lot of pressure built into that communication, they will then resist, they will try and give you talk you out of seeking independent verification of identity. So whether it's a call that you get, if you say well Do you mind if I just hang up and call the number back on your official website just to validate this, a scammer will try and talk you out of that they'll say something like the drivers already on his way. Or if it's even worse, if they're at your door. And you and you open the door and you are not expecting them, a utility representative will be more than happy to allow you to take the time to call the Customer Care Center to to validate their legitimacy. Whereas a criminal will try and convince you that something is very urgent and you don't have the time to do so. Those are some of the some of the most obvious signs of a criminal who's trying to pressure you into taking action before you have time to think and get the facts straight. The other thing to keep in mind, too, is and we've seen that we saw this from the very beginning when going back to that first customer care app or raising that concern because she felt that she was relaying the customers felt that their that their information had been compromised when in fact it wasn't just because a a somebody posing as utility rep seems to have your info, it does not make them legitimate. Unfortunately, most information about us as individuals as consumers is available out there on the web. That's just one of the sad facts about about, about modern life. Additionally, though, these scammers are are brilliant social engineers, and they're very good at making you think that they have legitimate information. So even if they a scammer calls up and they quote something that sounds like your legitimate balance, don't trust them. In fact, one of the one of the early cases that got that we researched that first month when we when we deployed that SWAT team I was talking about that really convinced me of the nature of this problem was we had one particular customer who had reported that the scammer had their balance their actual balance. And we looked at the account. And sure enough, the the information that the customer had reported to us did align with what their most recent bill was. And so we talked to the customer and we said well tell us how the conversation went. And they started to think about it. And what they what they finally recalled was that the scammer called them up and said there was a problem with your last payment your payment did not go through the the victim and said well wait a minute. Let me go I happen to be on my online banking system right now. Let me look right here. And I see my payment for $271.30 or whatever it was. It went through on October, October 4 or whatever it was. And then the scammer says no, I see your payment for 200 $71.30 it actually got rejected the next day, October 5 by your bank. And so now the person who was caught off guard by this call in the first place is thinking, Oh, this person's must be legitimate because he has a system right there and my payment is in it. And he knows all about my transaction? Well, no, you told them, you know, they tricked you into giving them that information. And so that's the other key is to never ever volunteer account information or personal information. If they, if somebody calls you up out of the blue, and they are legitimate, they will understand if you don't want to volunteer information, they will invite give you the opportunity to call back their official customer care line. But if if somebody calls you have a blue and starts asking for information about you, that is another clear sign that scam is is likely on, you're likely the victim of a scam.   Dan Seguin  25:51 Okay, worst case scenario. Now, let's say I'm a customer who fell victim to a scam, losing money and possibly personal information in process. What are my options? Is there anyone or anywhere specific that customers can turn to for help?   Jared Lawrence  26:12 There's some good news, but a lot of not good news to share on that front Dan. So the first thing I would recommend is if you have fallen victim, and if you have made a payment using any sort of you know, prepaid card or electronic payment channel, immediately call the fraud line associated with the payment method that you use to do it quickly. The reason is that, and I'm speaking about the prepaid cards in particular, the way these scammers work is that they're they're targeting multiple victims, you know, across the country at any given one time across the continent at any one time. And what they do is they they call you up, they trick you into making that payment. And, and basically in doing that they transfer your money from the card number you provide to a destination card that they're using to collect and use in quotes "launder" the funds. And then every few minutes, they sweep the money off of those cards. So there is typically a small window, where if the scammers have not liquidated those funds into the ether, that if you happen to call back, you might be able to get your money back. But you've got to move quickly because a lot of these payment channels that they use are attractive to scammers, particularly because they're non reversible. And, and so your timing has to be has to be very quick and very spot on with this. So that's that's the first thing to do. The second thing to do is to file a police report. Now, sadly, because these these criminals are typically perpetrating their crimes from offshore, they are not going to be reachable with local law enforcement. But nonetheless, it's important that you file a police report so that it enters the law enforcement database, it helps the various folks in law enforcement at the national level who are trying to create, you know, enough of a body of evidence to investigate these cases investigate these syndicates that are running these scams. And, and I'll also to mention that, for example, in the United Way to one one service here in North Carolina, and there are other organizations, they actually have resources that are available for victims of cybercrime and other frauds. So I would reach out to your local community assistance agency, if you have suffered any financial hardship as a result of being targeted, to determine what resources they have. I'm not aware of any that can restore the funds that you've lost, but they can maybe help you cope with any financial hardship that you're suffering in the near term as a result of being targeted. And then finally, you know, report the attempt to your utility because utility united against scams. We use this information to refine our strategies. We use this information for our engagement with our telecom partners, our engagement with law enforcement and government officials to him to support law enforcement efforts and to try and better shape public policy to protect customers against against these types of scams.   Dan Seguin  29:20 Now, maybe we can look at prevention. What are utility companies and police forces doing to help deter and fight against scammers? Can you tell us any success stories of scammers being deterred or better yet caught?   Jared Lawrence  29:37 Okay, well, I can actually share with you a couple of instances. These weren't directly related to the utility imposter scam. But the larger is the Canadian revenue associations that when CRA stands for Yes. So larger CRA scams, we celebrated when we read articles back in the fall of 2018, and again in 2019, where the Royal Canadian Mounted Police executed successful stings of scam call centers, basically running those texts, those tech scams against Canadian citizens. And in those timeframes. In one case, I believe they arrested 32 Indian nationals who were executing these scams out of a fraudulent call center. And another one, it was 28 criminals who were apprehended in those busts. And really the key there is again, you know, just countless reports of victims, each one a small victim of crime just building up to this very large case. There was also a recent case, in the US with the Internal Revenue Service scam, where I believe that the individual was arrested back in 2017 or 2018, but he was just convicted back in November of 2020, the ringleader, again another Indian call center operation that was running this IRS scam. And the ringleader there was sentenced to 20 years in prison and fined $9 million. So there are there are people in law enforcement at the national level, both in Canada and the US, who are who are paying attention and are specifically focusing on these, you know, very lucrative scams, these very lucrative criminal operations and building cases and seeking international partnerships to bust these operations. I think that those two are an example of of operations that were that were claiming hundreds of millions, if not more, dollars in ill gotten gains. And so they're probably slightly bigger fish in these utility scans. I don't I think these utility scammers are probably collecting millions of dollars a year but not hundreds of billions of dollars a year which is why these other tax related scams are gaining or gaining more attention.   Dan Seguin  32:16 Okay, thanks for sharing. Maybe Jared, tell us what is at the heart or lack thereof, of a scammers intention? What are some of the behaviors that are evidence of this?   Jared Lawrence  32:32 So, you know, one of the things that we have spent a lot of time understanding is what is this is utility imposter scammers M.O., Are they spending a lot of time researching their victims to create a really, you know, compelling story that increases their hit rate, or are they really they're going for high volume, low yield, but making their money off of volume. And it's really the latter. And so what I noticed very quickly, in the various countless times that I've called these fraud numbers to validate the phone numbers to get them shut down, frankly, is that the scammers very quickly try to ascertain whether you are a likely victim. So if you want to talk with them about anything about address change, sometimes I make up that I'm calling about an outage. They will immediately try and turn it into a conversation about an outstanding debt that would that is supposedly going to trigger a disconnection. And if you don't, signal any sort of gullibility toward it at that particular time, they're going to end the call really quickly. They'll try and do it in a way that makes it seem polite enough that you'll still walk away from that thinking that it was legitimate utility interaction. But in reality, you once you step back, you realize they didn't give me any customer service at all. They were they were just trying to figure out if I was, if I was likely mark for them or not. That's the biggest one. The second biggest one is that, you know, we, our customer care agents go through countless hours of training in order to how to maintain professionalism, how to be attentive to customers to listen to their needs. The scammers, they get frustrated really quickly and and if you attempt to call them out, they will very quickly turn on you and say some things that are very rude things that can't even be repeated on podcast. So that is another obvious giveaway is that if the if the person you're talking to starts to become rude, aggressive, or exerts pressure in any way, they're not utility representative.   Dan Seguin  34:44 Okay. Now, in contrast, tell us what's at the heart of any utility as they engage with customers. How can customers use these contracting intentions as a litmus test?   Jared Lawrence  34:58 So recognizing that these scammers might listen to this podcast, I've always a little bit careful to give away all of the strategies I use to validate that when I'm calling them up that they're indeed scammers. However, the obvious signs of a trained utility rep are number one, they're going to be attentive to your needs. Number two, they are not going to try and pressure you in anything, because our goal is to make sure that you are a happy customer that you're getting the service that you need. And if you happen to be facing financial hardship or difficulty paying, we're not going to threaten you with this connection, we're going to offer up payment arrangements, ways to structure your utility debt so that you can maintain service with us, the last thing that a utility professional has to do is to see your account be disconnected for non payment, our goal is to try and work with you as much as we can to keep you engaged in to work within your means with deferred payment arrangements and things like that. So if they if the person on the line is not really working with you, then that is a and they had called you first and that is you know, a pretty obvious sign right there that they're not a not a legitimate utility representative. Secondly, also, as I mentioned before, a scammer is not going to want want to spend any time talking with you about anything other than you are making a payment to them quickly. So if you have questions about say value added products and services, or if you, you know, are having service, you had a service disruption due to a storm or something like that. You can always ask a question about that and see how they handle it. And if they handle it with knowledge, and they actually are able to are showing a willingness to take the time to understand your issue, then that's a more than likely a legitimate utility. Utility representative. If, however, they constantly bring it back to your outstanding your fictitious outstanding debt, then you know, you're dealing with a scammer.   Dan Seguin  36:59 Finally, Jared, what does success look like for utilities united against scams? What is your hope for the next 5 or 10 years?   Jared Lawrence  37:12 So, you know, I read my originally instead of this Dan kind of changes I thought about a little bit more, especially as we have our five year anniversary of utility united against scams coming up just in just next week, actually. And, you know, I was thinking the knee jerk reaction reaction would be to say, Well, I'd like I'd like us to basically put these scammers out of business so that we don't, so we can disband so that there's no need for utilities united against scams. I think that that is a you know, a little bit too rosy of course, I think that I do like to make these utility imposter scams go away. And then just maintain kind of maintain the collaborative, but maintain it in such a way where we're just touching base sharing for information about anything that might be looking suspicious in our markets, and making sure that we are keeping scam activity at a minimum and keeping law enforcement policymakers fully engaged so that scams don't flare back up to the problem that they are right now. So my goal really is to is to achieve that combination of policy, solutions, as well as sheer operational tactics with partners in telecom and the prepaid card space in the other financial mechanism that the scammers use to shut down the loopholes so that this utility imposter scam goes away. And then utilities united against scams is a organization that just meets periodically to keep tabs on the market and make sure that things aren't flaring up again.   Dan Seguin  38:51 Okay. This is it. Jared, are you ready to close us off with some rapid fire questions?   Jared Lawrence  38:59 Sure. Hit me, Dan.   Dan Seguin  39:01 Let me start with this first one. What is your favorite word?   Jared Lawrence  39:06 My favorite word this year is "yes". And I say that is because we did we accomplish so many things on the fly, responding to the pandemic, and the important things that we as utilities had to do to help take care of our communities last year, that previously the answer would have been either No, or it's going to take us a long time to figure that out. So I feel like I and the rest of the industry have been opened up to the power of possibility and so this is the year of of answering all those possibilities with Yes.   Dan Seguin  39:44 Great answer. What is the one thing you can't live without?   Jared Lawrence  39:50 My morning workout.   Dan Seguin  39:51 Moving on. What habit or hobby Have you picked up during shelter in place?   Jared Lawrence  39:58 I started making mead. It is, I find it delicious. I'm not sure that those of my family or my wife have the same opinion. But I would.   Dan Seguin  40:11 Okay, if you could have one superpower, what would it be?   Jared Lawrence  40:16 The ability to sleep through the night without waking up for a variety of reasons.   Dan Seguin  40:21 If you could turn back time, and talk to your 18 year old self, what would you tell him?   Jared Lawrence  40:27 I would tell him not to be so shy I was, I was fairly shy. In my pre professional life, and even the early years of being in the professional world, and I've come to learn that you missed out on a lot by being shy.   Dan Seguin  40:43 And lastly, what do you currently find most interesting in your sector?   Jared Lawrence  40:51 Wow. So there are so many interesting things going on. But I think what is most interesting to me, and the reason why I'm excited to be in this industry for at least another 15 years before I'm ready to retire, is that societies are have made it one of their central goals to achieve carbon neutrality. And utilities are at the center of that not only in terms of hitting our goals within our companies, but being the ones best positioned to offer solutions to help major industries that are our customers help achieve their carbon neutral goals. And so I think the amount of opportunity and the number of interesting challenges that we face in the utility industry on that front is very exciting to me, and one of the reasons why I'm thrilled to continue to be utility leader.   Dan Seguin  41:44 So true, and well said, Jared. Okay, well, we've reached the end of another episode of The ThinkEnergy podcast. Again, thank you so much for joining me today. I really hope you had a lot of fun.   Jared Lawrence  41:58 I did. This was fantastic. Dan, I hope you can tell I am really passionate about fighting scammers, fighting criminals who take advantage of utility customers and so I welcome any opportunity to talk about this topic.   Dan Seguin  42:13 Thank you for joining us today. I truly hope you enjoyed this episode of The ThinkEnergy podcast. For past episodes. Make sure you visit our website hydroottawa.com/podcast blog. Lastly, if you found value in this podcast, be sure to subscribe. Anyway, this podcast is a wrap. Cheers, everyone.

Young people offer incredible opportunities for change with their new ideas and verve. However, part of the challenge for young people around the world is finding a platform from which their voice can be heard and valued. Thankfully, when it comes to the energy sector, climate change, and what's in store for the future, an organization by the name of Student Energy seeks to bridge that gap. Here with us to discuss the keys to unlocking a sustainable energy future and how can we work together with today's youth to get there is Shakti Ramkumar, Director of Communications & Policy at Student Energy. Related Content & Links:  Shakti Ramkumar - Director of Communications & Policy, Student Energy LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shaktiramkumar/?originalSubdomain=ca Student Energy - https://studentenergy.org Global Youth Energy Outlook Questionnaire: https://studentenergy.questionpro.ca/a/TakeSurvey?tt=GC5ugs4vOPw41XrSuBk1ew%3D%3D Learn more about the Global Youth Energy Outlook: www.studentenergy.org/outlook  --- Transcript: Dan Seguin  00:02 Hey folks, welcome back to another episode of the ThinkEnergy podcast, youth climate change, clean energy, the future. These are all pretty loaded topics. But believe it or not, we're here to discuss all of these today, and how they're connected. With every new generation that comes of age, there's a fresh perspective introduced to the table. Young people offer incredible opportunities for change with their new ideas, and verve. However, part of the challenge for young people around the world is finding a platform from which their voice can be heard and valued. Without well established networks and resources, young people can easily be stifled or forgotten. Thankfully, when it comes to the energy sector, climate change, and what's in store for the future, an organization by the name of Student Energy seeks to bridge that gap. Student energy is a Global Youth led nonprofit organization that strives to empower young people to accelerate their sustainable energy transition. They connect young people to global changemakers and provide them access to decision making spaces, so that they have opportunities to play a part in their energy future. They started with three driven students who, in 2009, set out to organize the first international student energy summit. Since then, it has expanded into a global organization, with programs engaging over 50,000 students from over 120 countries, alumni are going on to develop and implement renewable energy technologies, advise the United Nations and advocate for a clean energy future while working with some of the largest energy companies. So here's today's big question. What are the keys to unlocking a sustainable energy future? And how can we work together with today's youth to get there? So joining me on today's program is Shakti Ramkumar, Director of Communications and policy. Shakti oversees a strategy and operations of the organization as it continues to build the movement of students across the world committed to a sustainable energy future. Shakti, thanks for joining us today. Perhaps you can start by telling us a bit about yourself, your background, and what led you to becoming the Director of Communications and policy for Student Energy.   Shakti Ramkumar  03:47 Hi, Dan, thank you for having me today. So I'm currently the Director of Communications and policy at Student Energy, and it was a bit of a winding path for me to get here. I've been deeply concerned about climate change since I was really young. My very first science fair project when I was in third grade was actually on public transportation, and how it could reduce emissions for my city if we replaced a lot of car traffic with rapid transit like sky trains and buses. And after that, I did a whole bunch of projects on ecological footprint on using phase change materials to heat homes. And this initial experience of trying to find solutions and explore solutions is what led me to Student Energy. When I was in university at UBC, I was actually a participant in one of student energies programs called Generation energy, where I hosted a dialogue focused on what you'd want to see for the future of BC. And the reason I want to bring this project up is all of the youth champions from across Canada gathered in Winnipeg to put together a vision for Canada's energy future. And we were able to come up with this in about half a day. We were able to work through our differences and figure out the common values that we share. And what we want to see in Canada in about half a day, and that really demonstrated that young people just have a lot in common regardless of where they're from, and what situations they're living in. So that initial experience with Student Energy as a participant is what started my journey here.   Dan Seguin  05:17 Are you able to unpack for me? What's a sustainable energy future for us? And why is it so important that we work towards it? And what might it look like once we've achieved it?   Shakti Ramkumar  05:31 A sustainable energy future, for me is one where our global energy system is designed to support people and communities to thrive. And doing that through clean, affordable and reliable energy. To limit global heating to 1.5 degrees, which we know is necessary for the safety and survival of so many people and ecosystems, we will have to shift away from fossil fuels and drastically reduce our carbon emissions within the next really critical few years. And what would a sustainable energy future look like once we've achieved it? For that, I really want to emphasize that part about energy being a means for people and communities to thrive. Because I think sometimes there's a tendency to say, well, this renewable energy technology isn't capable of meeting this high level of energy demand. So we can't possibly shift away from the current system. And take, for example, one of the arguments that we often hear at Student Energy is, well, we couldn't possibly electrify every single car and truck on the road. Because we'll need a lot of minerals, it's going to cost a lot, it will have so many adverse impacts. And that's where we have to take a step back. And remember, the goal is not to replace every single car and truck on the road with a different cleaner version, the goal is mobility for people to get to where they need to go to meet their basic needs, and just enjoy their lives. And if we keep that end goal in mind, we won't have to reduce the energy transition to just swapping out one energy source for another. But really zeroing in on what makes a community livable and supports people to thrive and building an energy system around that. And we can do that with a combination of things from walkable communities, lifestyle shifts to reducing energy demand, ensuring people's basic needs are met through public transit, and then where we need them the odd electric car. So my point there is that a sustainable energy future is really not just about swapping energy, one energy source for another, but focusing on the end goal, which is we want a good standard of life for everyone. Now, this year,   Dan Seguin  07:32 I see that Student Energy launched a very unique research project designed for millennials to share their perspective on the energy transition. Student energy has named it the Global Youth Energy Outlook, the first project of its kind made by youth for youth around the world. What was the inspiration behind the development of this project?   Shakti Ramkumar  08:00 So yes, the Global Youth Energy Outlook is a report that we're developing. And it's completely led by young people for young people. And we're gathering perspectives from 1000s, 10s of 1000s of youth from all over the world on what they want to see for the energy future of their region. And the first phase of that research is a 10 minute questionnaire that but that we're inviting all young people who are between 18 to 30, to take, and there are a few things that inspired us to create this report. And to start developing it. The main reason is that we will be the ones building the infrastructure, implementing the policy changes, changing our communities, and as we work to address the climate crisis, and therefore we should be considered important stakeholders in that process. And for a long time, young people were either left entirely out of the energy sector or tokenized, without being given a real voice, and student energy was founded to create to change both of those things. And now we're doing that on a global scale with the Global Youth Energy Outlook. Another reason we were inspired to create this report is to show that young people are not a monolith. The outlook is led by 12 young regional coordinators in 10 regions around the world. And they're actively building that works in their own communities that kind of highlight the unique energy challenges that face each region, and to demonstrate that young people are engaging on that community level, and solving the kind of nuanced complex energy issues in their region and that we can't be treated at a global monolith.   Dan Seguin  09:33 And now, what are the key issues addressed in this questionnaire? How did Student Energy narrowed down the questions to ask what do you hope to achieve with the data collected from the Global Youth outlook?   Shakti Ramkumar  09:51 So the questionnaire covers quite a wide range of topics. We the big question we're asking is what young people want the energy mix in their region to look like in 2030. And we're also asking who young people believe is most responsible for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, whether they believe their governments are investing enough and fighting climate change. And we're also asking which policy options but young people prioritize over others in order to achieve net zero emissions. And these are really important questions for both young people to know how other youth around the world see the future of energy in their region, and also for decision makers in the energy industry to see where their future voters, consumers and workers are heading. So these are the big areas that we're covering in the questionnaire. And narrowing down the questions to ask was one of the hardest things I've ever had to do. I think we started with 160 questions and realized well, no one's gonna take the survey, he asked 160 questions. So we cut it down to about 40. And then cut it down to even further to just 10 questions covering the most important things with the option for people to take the 40 question one if they if they're particularly interested. So now it just takes 10 minutes, covers the the most important pressing questions that we had from our very long version. And we are quite excited about what this report could mean and what impact it could have once it's completed. For young people, we want this to be a powerful data backed tool that they can use to lobby their city governments, their state governments, their federal governments, the energy companies in their region to take action showing that here's what 1000s of young people around the world, your most important constituents and stakeholders want to see for the future of energy. And here's what what we want to do to help make the future happen. So we hope it's an advocacy tool for young people. And on the flip side, we also think it will provide some really important insights for people in government, people in the energy industry. And we've already heard from a number of our partners that they really need this kind of report in their own decision making to have kind of numbers and evidence behind what young people want to see. And using that to push their own climate action plans forward. So we hope it'll be a tool on both fronts for both young people and for decision makers to understand how best to work together.   Dan Seguin  12:19 By the way, folks, there will be a copy of the questionnaire within the show notes. Okay. Why is it so important that millennial voices on energy and sustainability be heard? What do you think are the most important distinguishing beliefs and/or values of this generation compared to other generations? And finally, what can older generations like mine be doing to better support this group?   Shakti Ramkumar  12:55 I think there are two main things that we have recognized are distinct about young people's values when it comes to the energy transition that kind of makes this era of the environment and climate movement a little bit different than the previous era. One is the timeline in which young people expect action. We're seeing commitments now, finally, from companies and governments about aiming for net zero emissions by 2050. And young people who are climate activists are saying, Okay, that's good, but we need to see action right now. And that's why our Global Youth Energy Outlook actually works on a timeline leading up to 2030, not 2050. As we will have to take drastic climate action by then if we want to act in accordance with climate science. So as the years pass, and our global climate commitments are still not strong enough to meet the 1.5 degree target that we've set as a collective the sense of urgency among young people, I think, is something that is really distinct. The second big value that we've seen from young people is that we are not siloed in our thinking, and that young people won't consider it a success. If we successfully decarbonize our energy system. The harms that the current energy system has inflicted on people and communities, and haven't made sure that the benefits of the clean energy transition are equitably distributed. So an emphasis on seeing energy as a mechanism through which we can build a more just and equitable society is something that is a really strong value for young people that I think is something new to the energy transition. And on the question of what can older generations do, at Student Energy, we really value intergenerational collaboration. We have a lot to learn from people who have set up the energy system as it is now about the complexities and the nuances of producing distributing supplying energy, so we really value intergenerational collaboration. And there's three main things that I think older generations can do, particularly those with resources. power to make decisions. One very simple invest in young people. That can look like financially supporting youth led organizations, youth led projects, or investing time through mentorship and guidance. Two is understand the value of youth, a lot of work organizations, we want them to really think, are we meaningfully engaging with young people? What can we do to meaningfully and equitably engage with young people, not just on a tokenistic basis, but on a really kind of equal relationship. And this is something Student Energy often works with organizations to help them figure out especially if they're navigating youth engagement for the very first time. And the third thing I would say is to create space for young people, older generations who have access to a large platform, or an influential position, think actively about how you can make space for young people are using that privilege. Whether this looks like asking an event organizer why there are no young people on the panel and recommending some young people join that panel, whether it looks like bringing up in a meeting, why we're not funding youth led organizations, or taking into consideration the youth voice when making that next strategy, that next plan. These are some tangible ways that older generations can really support young people.   Dan Seguin  16:20 I read that you served as the director of common energy at the University of British Columbia, one of the university's largest student sustainability organization. Can you tell us about that experience? I'm curious, what did you work on? What did you learn? And did anything surprise you?   Shakti Ramkumar  16:43 So at Common energy, our goal was to build community first and foremost, and invite people into the climate movement, many of them for the very first time as they entered university, and to help people understand the links between themselves as an individual and the changes they can contribute to as a collective. So we were all about tangible action. We recognized early on that one of the best ways to get people involved was to do something real physical and hands on. So we conducted waste audits on campus, we hosted student friendly plant based cooking workshops, things you can do in your dorm, we launched a reusable mug share program at our campus cafe. And while doing these hands on projects, we also held workshops on climate justice, on food justice, on transforming our cities. And these would regularly draw a packed crowd, because I think there's a real desire from young people to see what they can do to contribute to larger systems change. So we kind of brought both perspectives like here's what you can do on a day to day basis, using your time and your skills and your expertise. And here are the bigger issues that we need to always keep in mind on justice and equity that we're collectively working towards. So that was my big goal as director of common energy. I learned a lot during this time. And the most important thing, I think, is that collaboration and sustaining a movement is not easy, and it actually takes work. It takes intention and consistency. And isn't just something to say you're going to do and then it just happens. While I was co director of climate energy, I also collaborated with all the other climate and sustainability related groups on campus. And together, we worked to launch the UBC climate hub, which is now a fully fledged student driven initiative at UBC entering its third year. And what made us successful at the time was, yes, we were very concerned and passionate about climate action. But we also took meeting minutes, we helped each other stay accountable. We encouraged people to rest when they were burnt out. We chased every staff and professor who seemed even remotely likely to support us, we built a network of supporters and engaged every single day to working towards this vision. And I think these day to day things are what will make the climate movement successful. So a lot of people might see, you know, big climate strikes on TV or big speeches. But it takes a lot of coordination behind the scenes to to make that an impactful experience. And it takes a lot of just hard work and working with people's personalities and working in big groups and making sure everyone feels supported. And that those minute details I think are what I took away most from my experience at UBC.   Dan Seguin  19:27 Well done, Shakti, based on your learnings from working with UBC and student energy. What do you think are the most important energy transition steps to be taken now by governments, businesses, and individuals in order to have a significant impact by 2030 and by 2050?   Shakti Ramkumar  19:51 I think number one has to be to actually set emissions reductions targets that meet the scale of the climate crisis. All countries are still behind when it comes to their nationally determined contributions for the Paris Agreement. And I think the most important action now would be to be honest about the magnitude of the climate crisis and not hide behind far off targets, while leaving it hazy how exactly we're going to get there. So recognizing the carbon budget that we have, and setting real targets that will get us to our 1.5 degree target, I think it's the first step. The second one is, of course, our mission at student energy is to get people to recognize the importance of young people and to invest in youth, young people will be the ones to work in the energy system of the future. And right now, many renewable energy companies and even other energy companies that are trying to transition to clean energy, are looking at a major skills shortage. So if they want innovative ideas, fresh voices, building a dynamic workforce of the future, we need to bring in more young people. And we need to bring in young people who have historically been excluded from the energy space. This includes women, young people of color, indigenous youth youth from the global south, and ensure that whatever energy system we're building is actively mentoring and training young people to be a part of it. And this is a major gap that we're seeing in both renewable energy companies, and just the energy sector overall.   Dan Seguin  21:26 Now, I'm looking forward to hearing how you'll be tackling this next question. What do you think, are the greatest challenges ahead for sustainable energy transition? What will be essential to overcome them? What are the consequences if we don't?   Shakti Ramkumar  21:49 This is a great question. I mean, I've talked a lot about how we're failing to invest in young people. And I do think that's one of the greatest challenges. And the consequence, of course, is that we will not have people to to transform the energy system if we're not investing in training up young people. But another challenge in for the sustainable energy transition that's always on my mind is just the fact that a lot of the solutions we need do exist, they already exist. For example, improving energy efficiency could enable I think, 40% of the emissions reductions, we need to meet our climate goals without new technology. But despite that global improvements in energy efficiency have been declining. They're extremely slow, just 1.2% a year. And even as of last year, over 2.6 billion people around the world don't have access to clean cooking facilities. And this number has shifted so slowly over the past 20 years, and these kinds of things make it clear that many of the technologies and solutions we do need already do exist. And what we need is for people and companies and governments to broaden their definition of what innovation means, not just focus on novelty on emerging technologies, but to actually create incentives to implement and scale the solutions that we know that they work to, to accelerate the energy transition. So that's a big challenge that I see. A final challenge is not seeing the importance of nature and land in the energy system. And kind of seeing that as a separate environmental issue, which I think is sometimes the case in the energy sector. And I think this will have major consequences. First of all, we can't meet our climate goals, if we're not thinking about the natural ecosystems that we depend on about our unsustainable food system. If we're not supporting indigenous leaders who are on the front line of climate action, whether that is fighting against extractive industries, deforestation and land grabs, if we don't see that as part of the energy transition, there's no way we'll successfully meet our climate goals. And I think this is the responsibility of everyone working on an energy to also think about nature and land and in the work that they do.   Dan Seguin  24:05 Now Shakti, what makes you tick? How has your own lifestyle changed as a result of your studies and work on achieving sustainable energy? Was there a turning point for you? And how has the goal of a sustainable energy future challenged you personally?   Shakti Ramkumar  24:27 Since I was young, my parents have always encouraged me to think about fairness. And so I do take my own lifestyle choices pretty seriously as a type of climate action, especially living here in Canada. I think there's sometimes tends to be some binary thinking about whether we should focus on individual action or whether we should fight for systems change. And to me, those have always seemed like parts of the same whole. To me making the choices that are within my reach, whether that's going vegan, not buying too many things that I don't need. These are things that align with my values and something I've taken on as a result of my work. And they also fuel my commitment to systems change work. And I think the choices we make as individuals, as families of households, they lay the foundations for the kind of society that we're working to build as a collective. So I do try to think about, okay, if the policies and changes that I'm fighting for through my work become a reality, how would that trickle down to me as an individual? How would that change my life, and then I just try to do some of those things already, while we're still fighting for them. And what makes me tick, honestly, it's just community and having friends who are doing this together, I think the magnitude of the climate crisis and the barriers we face to climate action are so overwhelming, and honestly, sometimes really discouraging that we have to fight so hard to shift the needle so little, so slowly. So it's really necessary to find some joy within all of this and find people who you can laugh with. And this is why, you know, climate memes are a really big thing on the internet, because we need this laughter and these moments of joy to keep this movement going.   Dan Seguin  26:09 What do you think, is the most important thing that today's youth should hear right now, as it relates to sustainable energy? What call to action would you give them   Shakti Ramkumar  26:24 so for young people who are passionate about climate action, my message is to really consider the role that you can have in changing the energy system and in shaping the energy future, energy has often been a space that seems really inaccessible to a lot of young people. You know, there's the sense that you need an engineering degree, you need connections, you need a lot of money, to work in energy. And groups, like student energy are actively trying to change that. To help all youth understand that no matter what background, you're from, what career you're trying to have, understanding the complexities of the energy system, and seeing yourselves as part of the energy transition, are just a really important part of the future that we're all working towards. And there's also a lot of exciting opportunities on the horizon, in energy, and in all kinds of fields. So my message to young people is really kind of engage with energy and consider it as a possibility if you if you've never thought about it, to consider as a possibility. And to not shy away from the hard questions on energy. So what will it take to produce enough clean energy to meet the world's needs? What do we need to do to make sure everyone has access to energy, which utilities and regulators and power companies need to step up their game on climate action? What infrastructure needs to be upgraded? getting into the details and considering energy as a space for major systems change as well as a fulfilling career? I would say as my main call to action on the long term for young people, and student energy is here to make that happen for you. And on the immediate scale, I would say, you know, check out our Global Youth Energy Outlook questionnaire, because we really want to hear from young people from all backgrounds. And this is how we'll make kind of global policy change in the energy system.   Dan Seguin  28:17 Okay, now for the fun part. Shakti. Are you ready to close us off with our rapid fire questions?   Shakti Ramkumar  28:25 Yes, I sure am.   Dan Seguin  28:27 What is your favorite word?   Shakti Ramkumar  28:30 Since it's spring: metamorphosis.   Dan Seguin  28:34 What is one thing you can't live without?   Shakti Ramkumar  28:38 Oh, honestly, it's just time to be silly with friends.   Dan Seguin  28:42 What habit? Or hobby? Have you picked up during shelter in place?   Shakti Ramkumar  28:48 This was unexpected for me, but painting.   Dan Seguin  28:52 Cool. If you could have one superpower, what would it be?   Shakti Ramkumar  28:59 I'm gonna cheat and say I would love to teleport. And wherever I land, I would like to speak the language that is spoken there.   Dan Seguin  29:05 Now moving on, if you could turn back time and talk to your 18 year old self, what would you tell her?   Shakti Ramkumar  29:12 I would say, go to more parties, because soon you'll have to sit in your bedroom for a whole year and not hang out with people.   Dan Seguin  29:20 And lastly, what do you currently find most interesting in your sector?   Shakti Ramkumar  29:26 I mean, there's a lot going on. But I'm really excited about the possibilities around distributed energy.   Dan Seguin  29:31 Well, Shakti we've reached the end of another episode of The ThinkEnergy podcast. I truly hope you enjoyed this interview. And I hope you had a lot of fun.   Shakti Ramkumar  29:41 Definitely. I had a great time.   Dan Seguin  29:44 Thank you for joining us today. I truly hope you enjoyed this episode of The ThinkEnergy podcast. For past episodes. Make sure you visit our website hydroottawa.com/podcast. Lastly, if you found value in this podcast, be sure to subscribe. Anyway, this podcast is a wrap. Cheers, everyone.

Let’s talk about the birds and the bees and the flowers and the trees. Did you know that across North America, pollinators are in a steep decline. It may seem like an unlikely union, but utilities are ideally suited to restore these environments. Here with us to discuss Hydro Ottawa’s latest partner project to create one of the largest pollinator meadows of its kind in Eastern Ontario is Tracey Etwell from Canadian Wildlife Federation & Meaghan McDonald from Rideau Valley Conservation Authority. Related Content & Links:  Tracey Etwell LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/traceyetwell/ Meaghan McDonald Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/meaghan-mcdonald-83b08083/ Canadian Wildlife Federation Twitter: https://twitter.com/cwf_fcf Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/canadian-wildlife-federation/ Website: https://cwf-fcf.org/ Rideau Valley Conservation Authority Twitter: https://twitter.com/RideauValleyCA Website: https://www.rvca.ca/ --- Transcript: Dan Seguin  00:02 Hey, everyone, welcome back to another episode of the ThinkEnergy podcast. On today's show, we're going to talk about the birds and the bees and the flowers and the trees - literally. Did you know that across North America, the populations of monarch butterflies, bees and other pollinators are in a steep decline due to herbicides, pesticides, climate change, and a reduction in natural pollinator habitats. Pollinators are responsible for a third of the world's food supply, so they are extremely vital to our existence. In Canada, there are more than 1000 species of pollinating animals that are responsible for billions of dollars worth of Canadian farm produce, flowers, and ecosystems that rely on pollination. In short, without pollinators, food supply would suffer drastically. It may seem like an unlikely union, but utilities like Hydro Ottawa are ideally suited to restore these environments, thanks to a number of utility corridors and properties in their service territories, not to mention the kilometers of power lines, and right of ways along roadsides. Moreover, vegetation along utility corridors are compatible with these types of vegetation necessary to support pollinators. In 2019, Hydro Ottawa began civil construction of its largest ever municipal transformer station in the south end of Ottawa situated on 24 acres of land. Since the new transformer station requires only five acres of property, Hydro Ottawa partnered with the City of Ottawa, Rideau Valley Conservation Authority, and the Canadian Wildlife Federation to create one of the largest pollinator meadows of its kind in Eastern Ontario, adjacent to this future station. The agreement means that 15 acres will be dedicated to a pollinator meadow, which is scheduled for seeding in the spring of 2021 A four acre tree reforestation area was reforested in 2020, with 2750 trees, thanks to the Rideau River Conservation Authority. So here is today's big question. What goes into a successful pollinator meadow? And how can we as an industry, and as ordinary citizens help the movement by building more pollinator meadows? Maybe in our own backyards? I have two guests joining me today for this podcast. My first guest is Tracy Etwell, a restoration ecologist with the Canadian Wildlife Federation. Tracy supports the right of way program, which helps restore pollinator metals for monarch butterflies and other pollinators in Eastern Ontario. My second guest is Meaghan McDonald, Lake planning and shoreline stewardship coordinator for the Rideau Valley Conservation Authority. There are 36 conservation authorities in Ontario responsible for furthering the restoration, development and management of watershed and their natural resources across the province. Thank you both for joining me today. So, Tracy, let's start with the Canadian Wildlife Federation. What are pollinators? What important role do pollinators play? And what does pollinator habitat look like?   Tracy Etwell  04:37 Great question, Dan. So as a group, there are many species that are pollinators. And if people aren't aware, there's things like native bees, flies, moths, butterflies, beetles and even our hummingbirds are pollinators. But when we talk about our pollinator habitat in our project, we're really focusing on the insects such as our native bees, flies and butterflies. And pollinator habitat varies depending on each species, but all insect pollinators benefit from open meadows full of wildflowers and grasses. And these native flowers provide the pollen and the nectar and the vegetation in general for the species to hide nest and overwinter. And also some of these flowers are very specific hosts for butterflies and moths, where they require that specific plant for their lifecycle.   Dan Seguin  05:21 Now, this question is for both, do habitats vary depending on where they're located in the province and country? If so, what's unique about Eastern Ontario? Wondering, Meaghan, if you can expand on this? And then what about you, Tracy?   Meaghan McDonald  05:37 Yeah, sure. So obviously, our country is massive. So there's a big variety of habitats that mountains, prairies, plains, forests, wetlands, all sorts of things. I think what's kind of unique about Eastern Ontario, maybe in comparison to our southern counterpart there is that we do have still quite a lot of natural areas available to us. The development pressures out here are building just as they are in the southern region. But I think in Eastern Ontario, there's a really good opportunity to sort of preserve what we already have and protect the resources that we already have as that development occurs. So I think that's kind of a unique feature out here.   Tracy Etwell  06:18 So our focus on Eastern Ontario is based on two things. One is that the threatened monarch butterfly range in Canada is heavily focused in Ontario and Quebec. So obviously, we're overlapping that region. And secondly, our funder, which is the Ontario Trillium Foundation has sponsored our work in the Eastern Ontario region. There are also tons and tons of rights of way here which we define as roadways, transmission lines, and pipelines. And as Meaghan said, we do have habitat across Canada. And the management of this vegetation along rights of way is compatible with Meadow habitat, which benefits these pollinators. And we're hoping that rights of way meadow projects will catch on across Canada. And we're busy creating a national network of right of way managers to encourage meadow habitat restoration across the country.   Dan Seguin  07:03 Okay, Tracy, I know that there are many factors that are contributing to the decline in pollinators and their habitats. Based on your experience, what are those reasons? And is there one in particular, that's been identified as the most destructive force?   Tracy Etwell  07:21 Yeah, so you're correct. There are many forces that contribute to this. The biggest one is thought to be the loss of habitat, which is consistent with a lot of species. When land is developed, the habitat is lost. Also, these insects need large corridors of habitat to travel around. So when these pieces get disconnected, it's harder for these pollinators to find that habitat. Also, in Eastern Ontario, the invasive plant species wild parsnip, which means some people may be aware of is another threat. It's spread rapidly throughout the area and is out-competing or native wildflowers. It's hard to control in many places they spray and frequent mowing are the ways to control it. Then, so when it's then controlled, then those native species that would have been there are now removed. So we're hoping once wild parsnip can be under control, better meadow habitat restoration can support these populations.   Dan Seguin  08:16 Back to you. Meaghan, can you tell us about the Rideau Valley Conservation Authority and what types of stewardship projects you're involved with?   Meaghan McDonald  08:26 Or so in partnership with our foundation branch, the Rideau Valley Conservation Foundation, we offer a number of stewardship programs that are really aimed at largely private landowners, but also municipalities and public land owners as well. Our main one would really be our forestation and tree planting program. We plant about 200,000 trees just in the Rideau watershed alone, every year. We also have a shoreline naturalization program, which helps a lot of shoreline land owners create sort of a natural buffer along their waterways. We have a lot of lakes and rivers in our watershed that we're fortunate to have. So we like to help landowners protect what they have on their property. We also have a rural clean water grant program, which is aimed at helping farmers do clean water projects on their property. And then in addition to that, we also do some stream monitoring, wetland restoration, invasive species removal and garbage cleanups, especially in the city of Ottawa with our city's free launch program   Dan Seguin  09:33 With respect to pollinator meadows. Meaghan, what can you tell us about your organization's role? Do you bring your regional expertise about Eastern Ontario's environment and its native plants?   Meaghan McDonald  09:46 Yeah, so we don't have a huge focus on pollinators and our organization we've historically been a lot more focused on water quality protection projects, which is why it's so important for us to have partners like the Canadian Wildlife Federation to partner with on on projects like this. So we don't have a major role in the pollinator project realm. Where we do bring our regional expertise is more for tree planting, shoreline naturalization, so your trees and your shrubs and items like that through our stewardship programs. We also partner with our nursery suppliers, the Ferguson tree nursery, which is located down in Kemptville. And they've been working lately with us and a few other groups in the Ottawa Valley on expanding their product line away from just trees so that they also can be a source of native pollinator species as well in Eastern Ontario. Right now, it's really aimed at potted plants for landowners if they want to, you know, create a little habitat pollinator habitat in their own property. But they are looking at expanding that so that they can be a local source for native seed as well. It's very important that we kind of keep that local seed source in the area because when you're bringing in plants from different regions are sometimes not quite as adapted to our current climate conditions as, say, Southern Ontario or other parts of the country. So we're really the Canadian Wildlife Federation  is kind of the expert on this project that we're working with and we're very happy to have their their expertise onboard.   Dan Seguin  11:34 You both are playing integral parts in the 15 acre pollinator meadows that hydro ottawa was building in the south end of the city. I understand it's one of the largest in Eastern Ontario. Tracy, why are utilities a key player in Canadian Wildlife Federation's pollinator recovery efforts.   Tracy Etwell  11:58 So CWF is very excited to be partnering with hydro, Ottawa and RVCA on this initiative, which is one of the largest projects as you mentioned. Utilities are a key player in our pollinator restoration efforts, and they maintain over 660,000 kilometers of transmission lines 1000s of generation stations across Canada, which has huge potential for pollinator habitat restoration, also their linear design are relatively easy for pollinators to find. Since utilities need to control the weedy species over the long term along these facilities. It provides a great place for the wildflowers and grasses to grow. And it provides a great opportunity for you utilities to demonstrate Environmental Leadership and provide the habitat. That's a win win for the utilities and the pollinators.   Dan Seguin  12:43 And now for you, Meaghan, what kind of follow up work does Rideau Valley Conservation Authority do for a project like Hydro's 15 acre pollinator Meadow?   Meaghan McDonald  12:56 Yeah, so for this project, we're actually already going to be on site for a related tree planting project. So it's kind of why we are involved in the in the pollinator side, because it does take a little bit of work to establish native pollinator seed, many of the native seeds, for example, they might take one, two, maybe more years to germinate, and really a few years before they really establish and take over. So it's really important that we manage that area for invasive species so that they don't take over. Or that an opportunistic species like Tracy mentioned, poisoned parsnip, for example, or Manitoban Maple seedlings that they don't move in. So this will be done really through annual to semi annual mowing of the site. So we waited till the end till the right time to sort of do a mow so that we can remove some of the unwanted species, allowing the native ones to really come up. And we'll probably also do a little bit of Spot Removal of the undesirable plants as they come up as well. And we'll do some monitoring as well plots throughout the meadow that I'll let us sort of measure how well the native plants are really coming along and at what rates which will be great because it's will be a great learning experience for us. Since we don't personally have a lot of experience. It'll just kind of be a great way to see what works and what doesn't and what goes into a project like this so that hopefully we can be involved with more in the future.   Dan Seguin  14:28 The Rideau Valley Conservation Authority has also planted 2750 trees on four acres at this site. Meaghan, is the reforestation connected to the meadow, or is it a separate but complementary initiative?   Meaghan McDonald  14:47 Yeah, I think it's kind of bolted is on the same site. The trees were planted last spring, and they kind of form a little bit of a barrier around the outside area of the pollinator garden. department started the pollinator meadow. So it's, it does create a nice barrier between the meadow and the adjacent highway and adjacent farm field. So it's going to create a nice of a windbreak. It'll also help with some of the salt spray that's coming off the highway. And these trees were really planted as part as a compensation for the station that's being built there. And we found that having the combination of the trees as the compensation and also the opportunity for the pollinator habitat was just such a great opportunity at this particular site. Just because we don't really want to get trees planted too close to the station, especially with the tornado that came through a few years ago. So it's nice to have those trees at a distance but also have that nice low growing, easy to maintain pollinator Meadow in the areas directly surrounding it. So it's a it's a nice combination there.   Dan Seguin  16:01 Now understanding that without pollinators Canada's food supply is threatened. Tracy, how is the Canadian Wildlife Federation building resources and support for these projects.   Tracy Etwell  16:14 So the Canadian Wildlife Federation is committed to supporting pollinators for both our diverse biodiversity and our food supply. As you mentioned, many of the nutritious plants we eat such as fruits and vegetables rely on insect pollination, and 90% of the world's flowering plants rely on insect pollination. So it's critical that as a global society, we support these insect pollinators. Now our project is focused on a variety of support such as technical expertise in building these meadows, increasing the native seed supply in Ontario, and providing case studies of the costs and benefits of restoring Meadow habitat. We work with interested managers to develop their respective projects. And we've also only recently formed the Canadian branch of rights of way within the US rights of way habitat working group to enhance our network so that we have more access to resources, case studies and best practices.   Dan Seguin  16:28 I'm really looking forward to your thoughts on this next question, Tracy - road right of ways are a major push for Canadian Wildlife Federation's pollinator initiative. Why build them there?   Tracy Etwell  17:19 Yeah, so like transmission lines, road rights of way or another area of great potential for Habitat. If you think about the over 1 million kilometers of roads across Canada, that's a lot of space for pollinator habitat. There's also a lot of interest in reducing the mowing and the herbicide use that goes into maintaining roads. And by using native plants that can allow for that reduction in those two aspects. And it may even save municipalities maintenance costs by reducing these efforts. And also, it's a great opportunity to share the initiative with the public that are driving by and can see these beautiful displays.   Dan Seguin  17:56 Now for my last question - for both of you. How can landowners improve pollinator habitats on their properties? And what could citizens do to support this work? Or our pollinator friends in general? Meaghan, let's start with you and the Rideau Valley Conservation Authority.   Meaghan McDonald  18:17 So we always promote the use of native plants on properties for a number of reasons, they obviously have benefits to pollinators. But they also are often more low maintenance and typical ornamental plants. So we would encourage folks that that are gardening or are looking for something to plant on their property, then maybe consider some of our native plant species just because they do have that added benefit to the pollinators. And we're also of course, promote the use of native plants along natural areas like shorelines. In addition to sort of the, the, the wildflowers and the meadow species that we're using in this project, there's lots of native trees and shrubs as well that they can consider that are beneficial to pollinators. I was just gonna say and then supporting your local native nurseries, there's a few in the Ottawa Valley that people can consider. And sometimes it just takes a little bit more searching and then digging to find those native native plants for your garden, but they're out there. And if we all support our local native nurseries, then they'll be able to continue supplying those plants for us.   Dan Seguin  19:40 And now Tracy, what about from a Canadian Wildlife Federation perspective?   Tracy Etwell  19:45 Right, so we also support backyard gardens planting native plants. That's a great start. We offer many webinars and guides online to help people get into this mode of planting and some other things that people can do that they might not have considered it is leaving leaves on your lawn and garden in the fall. Many of these pollinators actually over winter. And they'll use that that habitat to protect themselves from the winter conditions. Lastly, if you can resist mowing those dandelions until more spring flowers bloom, that's one of the first floor resources that are available for pollinators. And the spring is actually one of the hardest seasons for them to get going, because there's very little for them to feed on and they're very hungry, obviously. So something else you can also do is overseed. With clover in your garden and clover is a great resource for pollinators. In terms of bigger things, you can contact your local councils and ask them to become a bee city, which is a specific designation, which means they support pollinators and you have projects that support that. And also contact your municipality and ask them if they can support Meadow habitat restoration projects in their area.   Dan Seguin  20:57 Okay, Tracy, and Meaghan, are you ready to close this off with some rapid fire questions? We'll start with Tracy and then we'll follow up with Meaghan.   Meaghan McDonald  21:06 Sure.   Dan Seguin  21:09 What is your favorite pollinator?   Tracy Etwell  21:13 My favorite pollinator is the Gypsy cuckoo Bumblebee, which is an endangered Bumblebee with a great name.   Meaghan McDonald  21:22 I was just gonna say our native bees, there's many species and they're all they're all important. So I don't have quite a specific answer, but native bees.   Dan Seguin  21:31 Now, what is your favorite flower?   Tracy Etwell  21:35 My favorite is the brown eyed Susan, which is a native plant, of course, a powerhouse for pollinators and very easy to grow.   Meaghan McDonald  21:44 I like wild bergamot. It's again, easy to grow. And it's got a really cool kind of purple flower on it.   Dan Seguin  21:52 Moving on, what is one thing you can't live without?   Tracy Etwell  21:57 Chocolate! Always chocolate!   Meaghan McDonald  22:01 And I would say coffee.   Dan Seguin  22:05 What habit or hobby have you picked up during shelter in place?   Tracy Etwell  22:11 For me, it's been sourdough baking - making my own.   Meaghan McDonald  22:17 I've been starting a lot of craft projects and not finishing them. And we also got to canoe last year and new cross country skis this winter.   Dan Seguin  22:26 Okay, if you could have one superpower, what would it be?   Tracy Etwell  22:31 For me it would be to fly to travel and see the world.   Meaghan McDonald  22:36 Also to fly.   Dan Seguin  22:37 That this is an interesting one. If you could turn back time and talk to your 18 year old self, would you be telling her?   Tracy Etwell  22:46 I would tell her to enjoy life more and not to be so serious.   Meaghan McDonald  22:52 I would say same and also travel and spend time with friends and family as much as you can, while you can.   Dan Seguin  22:59 Okay, what excites you most about these pollinator projects?   Tracy Etwell  23:05 I get excited to see the new life emerge. So when new plants start to bloom when the insects start to come in and use that habitat that just fills me with joy.   Meaghan McDonald  23:16 And I'm excited about kind of learning something new because these projects are new for us and being able to bring some of that knowledge to our landowners and then also to some of our conservation areas as well.   Dan Seguin  23:28 And lastly, what do you currently find most interesting in your sector?   Tracy Etwell  23:35 For me, I would say it's the application of new technologies that are coming online that help us support the conservation projects, answering specific questions that we need help with.   Meaghan McDonald  23:45 And I really like working with landowners and sort of seeing them connect the dots on how what they do on their property really impacts nature and it's always fun to see.   Dan Seguin  23:56 Well, Tracy, Meaghan, we've reached the end of another episode of The ThinkEnergy podcast. I truly hope you had a lot of fun. And thank you so much for joining me today. Cheers.   Tracy Etwell  24:11 It's been great. Thank you, Dan.   Meaghan McDonald  24:12 Yeah, thank you. It has been.   Dan Seguin  24:17 Thank you for joining us today. I truly hope you enjoyed this episode of The ThinkEnergy podcast. For past episodes, ake sure you visit our website hydroottawa.com/podcast. Lastly, if you found value in this podcast, be sure to subscribe. Anyway, this podcast is a wrap. Cheers, everyone.

Did you know that it wasn’t too long ago that coal represented 25% of Ontario’s energy supply mix? This toxic energy source caused a host of damaging environmental and public health problems. Thankfully, in 2014, Ontario was the first jurisdiction in North America to eliminate coal as a source of electricity production. Climate change and transportation policy analyst at David Suzuki Foundation, Gideon Forman joins us to chat about coal, how Ontario transitioned away from it, and what’s next for Canada on the road to cleaner energy. Related Content & Links:  Gideon Forman  Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gideon-forman-4b4613a2/ David Suzuki Foundation Twitter: @DavidSuzukiFDN Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/david-suzuki-foundation/ Website: https://davidsuzuki.org/ --- Transcript: Dan Seguin  00:02 Hey, everyone, welcome back to another episode of The ThinkEnergy podcast. Today I'd like to talk to you about smog warnings, acid rain, air pollution. In other words, the early 2000s in Ontario, coal fired power plants have been linked to a host of damaging environmental problems. But coal also causes a lot of public health issues with links to asthma, cancer, neurological problems, and other hearts and lung illnesses. Back in 2003, 25% of electricity in Ontario came from coal plants. Did you know coal emissions were a major source of air pollution that contributed to 53 smog days in Ontario alone in 2005. That same year, my great city of Ottawa had 25. For those that may not know, smog days would be declared in the province on days when the air wasn't as safe to breathe due to the amount of toxins in the air. In 2014, Ontario was the first jurisdiction in North America to completely eliminate coal as a source of electricity production. According to Air Quality Ontario, the province phase out of coal has been considered to have achieved the most significant results of any climate change initiative in North America to date. Now, today 94% of electricity generated in Ontario is emission free, and those smog advisories are all but a thing of the past. There's no doubt that Ontario has been a leader in fighting climate change and investing in cleaner energy sources. By 2030, Canada will phase out traditional coal fired electricity in the country altogether, striving to have 90% of electricity from non emitting sources, and simultaneously cutting carbon pollution from the electricity sector by 12.8 million tons. So here's today's big question: Although it wasn't that long ago that coal made up a quarter of Ontario's electricity supply, I feel the story of how it was achieved has been lost somehow. So how did Ontario break ahead of the pack in North America to decommission coal plants? And what does that mean for our future in the renewable energy space? joining me on today's show is Gideon Forman on climate change and transportation policy analyst from the David Suzuki foundation. Gideon has a Master's of art and philosophy from McGill University and a certificate in renewable energy from the University of Toronto. He has been awarded the Queen Elizabeth to Diamond Jubilee Medal and is a former executive director for the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment. Hey, Gideon, thanks so much for joining us today. Perhaps you can start by telling us a bit about yourself, your background, and what keeps you passionate about your work.   Gideon Forman  04:05 Thanks, Dan. Yes, I've worked in the environmental movement for I guess about 20 years now. Gosh, I guess that's right. But it's been a long time. I work with the David Suzuki Foundation, now. For the last five years I've worked with David Suzuki, which has been wonderful. But before that for 10 years, 11 years actually, I was with a group called Physicians for the Environment, a group of wonderful doctors across Canada using their credibility and their scientific smarts as doctors to push for stronger environmental legislation. And with the Physicians for the Environment Group. We worked on issues like pesticides trying to ban lawn and garden pesticides primarily to protect kids health. And we did a lot of work on the coal phase out in Ontario and ramping up renewable energy. So I have some familiarity with that I'm not a doctor myself, but I loved working with doctors and it was wonderful to see the the influence that doctors had on the environmental debate. For the last five years since june 2015 almost six years now i've been with the david suzuki foundation worked on a number of different things but my major work now is around transportation - trying primarily to give people alternatives to the car really that's what my work is in a nutshell: walking, cycling, public transit these sorts of things so they can leave the car at home and move around in a more sustainable way.   Dan Seguin  05:24 i have a question for you what is coal exactly can you give us some background around why it was used as an energy source and why it made up such a large portion of our provincial supply mix until recent decades   Gideon Forman 05:41 Coal, at its most basic is decayed plant matter ancient ancient decayed plant matter that's been under pressure and is formed into a mass of hard typically black or brown mass it's mostly carbon and it's been used until relatively recently because it's cheap and often quite accessible. Unfortunately it's still used in many parts of the world it was used in ontario to produce electricity till 2014 we'll have more chance to talk about that but the short answer is that it was cheap you could throw it into the furnace and burn it and it created a lot of heat and drove generators there were lots of terrible problems with it but it was accessible and cheap.   Dan Seguin  06:25 Gideon some of us folks remember the days when acid rain and smog or irregular occurrence were these weather advisories a primary consequence of our coal usage and if so, how? Also what other impacts was it having on the environment and the health impacts on residents of ontario?   Gideon Forman  06:51 Yeah so certainly the coal plants were a big factor in smog and acid rain. They weren't the only factor cars and trucks and other sources of fossil fuel combustion were also a problem but the coal plants were a big problem. The coal plants in Ontario contributed of course and coal plants from other parts of north america primarily the midwestern us they were big contributors to our acid rain and our smog so that's that was very much an issue. In terms of the impacts the biggest impact that we talked about now is the climate impact the coal plants at their height were the equivalent of millions of cars on our roads when we took the coal plants out it was like removing 6 million cars from ontario's roads so they were a very very significant source of greenhouse gases and they also produced other things that were toxic things like mercury for example and arsenic so they were also a significant source of human health problems they made asthma worse, what they call the particulate matter in smog some of that came from coal plants and particulate matter is a factor in lung cancer so a number of different ailments were connected to the coal plants   Dan Seguin  08:10 Now in a nutshell what was the case for eliminating coal fired electricity in ontario and who led it? Also was there backlash in 2003 when ontario announced it was closing the provinces for remaining coal fired plant if so what kind of backlash was there?   Gideon Forman  08:33 okay that's a number of questions so the case for closing the coal plants was that they were just a massive massive source of greenhouse gas emissions and other contributors to pollution things like nitrous oxides and sulfur oxide sulfur dioxide so they were contributing to climate change they were contributing to acid rain and they were contributing to human illness on a very big scale and the other reason that it made sense to close them was it was something doable. In ontario because they were publicly owned, there was an opportunity to do it in quite a a rapid and efficient manner you know in many places coal plants are privately owned - in the united states for example and so if they're privately owned it's very difficult to close them quickly there's all sorts of issues around compensation and government has to step in it can be very complicated legally but, in ontario, all the coal plants were owned by the government of ontario so the government of ontario could close them basically through the stroke of a pen and that's what happened it was over a number of years but that's what happened the Ontario government decided that, by 2014, they would no longer be coal used to produce electricity in the province and that's what happened so it was a matter of something that would have huge impact and that was doable that was kind of the thinking behind it. In terms of backlash, there wasn't a lot of backlash. There were some who raised concerns about the transition, loss of jobs for workers in the coal plants. There were some questions about electricity supply. But for the most part, I think there was a lot of public acceptance that we had to get off coal, this was something really good to do from an air quality point of view. And increasingly, from a climate change point of view. In terms of who drove the coal phase out, a lot of it was pushed by health professionals: the Ontario Medical Association, doctors, including some of the doctors that I worked with, in physicians for the environment, nurses, Ontario public health officials, medical officers of health, these sorts of people and family physicians, these sorts of people saw firsthand the effect of smog, of bad air on people's lives. And they talked openly about it. And so was very much driven, I think, by the health professionals. I remember one time, Dan, when I was working with the physicians for environment, we we arranged a meeting to meet with the Minister of Environment for the province of Ontario, and I brought in doctors, I brought in nurses, and we had an opportunity to talk across the table with the minister. And it was just fascinating for the minister to see firsthand the effect of coal on people's lives in a very direct way. I remember one of our doctors from Kingston, she said, you know, Minister, there are times when the weather when the air quality is so poor, that my patients can't go outside, and I really worry for them. And if you're close the coal plants, this would make a huge difference in the lives of my patients. And you could see the minister really connecting with that at a very human level. So it wasn't just an abstraction for our doctors. And so I think that was one of the driving forces behind the coal plant phase out.   Dan Seguin  11:54 I understand coal was reduced in stages between 2003 and 2014. To ensure system reliability, get in, do you know, what were some of the challenges? And where did they make up the shortfall in generation? Has it been renewable energy? Was it a smooth transition? What investments or strategies were put in place to make sure it succeeded?   Gideon Forman  12:24 Yes, I think the short answer is that it was a smooth transition. I mean, it was over 11 years. So it wasn't like someone, you know, flipped a switch. And it ended overnight, it was carefully done thoughtfully done over more than a decade. I think that the the ability of the province to move off coal was a fact was it was a function of a couple of things. So first of all, the doctors and the nurses, as I mentioned, I think prepared the public explained the case for going off coal. So I think you had a public that was very supportive of the phase out of coal. I think that was one factor. The other factor is that while coal represented 25% of the electricity grid, it wasn't so massive, an amount that it was impossible to do. I think it was, it was a stretch. But it was something that was technically possible to do. It wasn't like we were having it's not like our grid was 100% coal, and we were trying to get off for 100% coal. It was 25%, Dan. And that's a very significant amount, but it was also doable. So I think that's important to say. The the other pieces that they brought in the entire government brought in some of the other parts of our electricity grid, and ramp them up. So they refurbish the Bruce Nuclear plants so that a couple of those units came back. And that was helpful in in the transition. They put in some natural gas. And that's problematic. We can talk about that in a little while, but but they did ramp up natural gas, what they call peaker plants for the peak use of electricity. They did bring in a little bit more hydro power. And the biggest. And the biggest are in terms of in my view, the most exciting part of the transition was renewable energy. And so that was quite an effort in those years from 2003 to 2014. To ramp up renewable energy, particularly wind and solar power, wind and solar are still relatively small amounts of the of the grid. In 2014, it was about 7% came from wind and solar. But that was also one of the things that allowed us to get off coal. So it was a combination of those things, some more nuclear, some some renewables and some natural gas, and also more of an emphasis on conservation so that we reduce demand.   Dan Seguin  14:53 Let's move on to the next question. decommissioning coal plants and investing in renewable energy comes at a cost. What kind of impact did this have on Ontario's electricity rates? According to the most recent comparison stats, I have Ontario's electricity rates are the fourth lowest in the country. In your mind, were fears justified or just overblown?   Gideon Forman  15:20 Oh, yes, there was quite a bit of nonsense about how expensive and I put that in quotation marks, renewables are, first of all, then the cost of renewables has dropped dramatically. Between 2012 and 2016, in Ontario, the cost of solar, for example, went down by about 50%. And this is part of a worldwide trend. And it's not just for me, I mean, don't take our word for it. If you look at the OECD statistics, just in general, the cost of wind and solar have dropped very, very precipitously, very sharp drop in the cost of wind, and solar in particular. And it's not surprising, once you put wind and solar in once you put in the solar panels or build the windmills, the fuel, if you will, which is wind and sunlight are free. So it's not so surprising that you know, hello, renewables are not expensive. The other reason why we had such confidence in renewables in terms of cost, was it some of the strongest economies in the world, were embracing renewables. And I'm thinking, for example of Germany. Germany's gone into renewables, much of it wind and solar in a very big way, very powerful industrial economy. And yet, they've been able to make very significant advances in wind and solar to the point where a very significant amount of their whole grid is now renewable. So we never had any concerns about the cost. There's always some initial costs when you're moving to something new. But those would be more than compensated for by just the fact that renewables were so inexpensive to run. So we were never concerned about that. The other side of the equation is that as we got off coal, we were also saving money. Don't forget, there's a lot of costs, dollar costs, in acid rain in destroying lakes, destroying our natural world, there's a lot of costs in harming people's health, right? If you've got 1000s of people who have asthma that's gotten worse or other illnesses connected with bad air, that's a cost as well. And of course, climate change is the perhaps the ultimate cost. So by phasing out coal fired power, we were saving money. And by ramping up renewables, we were also saving money. So in terms of just dollars, yes, it made a lot of sense.   Dan Seguin  17:34 Now, with the removal of coal from Ontario supply mix, is gas next? what are some easy wins or long term solutions that will take Ontario's or Canada's energy transformation to the next level?   Gideon Forman  17:51 So one of the things, no question, that allowed us to get off coal was natural gas. And at the time, people saw natural gas as what we call kind of a transition fuel. You know, many in the environmental movement said it was a bridge, you know, we want to get to 100% renewables, we can't do that right away. So we need to move off coal, ramp up natural gas, at least in the short term. I think unfortunately, now that that was probably a mistake to think that natural gas was a bridge. Natural gas is a fossil fuel. And although in some ways it's better than coal, it's still very problematic. The production of natural gas, we have what are called fugitive emissions where methane leaks, when you extract the natural gas, that's a big problem. And then, of course, when you burn the natural gas, in a home or when you burn it into an electricity plant, you're producing greenhouse gases. So we have some real concerns about natural gas, and electricity production. Where we need to be over time is renewables. I think the good news is that there's a lot of solar resource in Ontario, there's a lot of wind in Ontario, we can probably get some more from a little bit more from hydro, and that has to be done properly. But we can probably get a little bit more from Ontario, on terms of hydro. But I think one of the biggest things that we can draw on Dan, to get to 100% renewables is getting water power from other provinces. One of the things that we've talked about is buying more hydro power, water power from Quebec, Quebec has a huge hydro resource, as you know, and a lot of it's sold to American customers. That's understandable. But we could also buy much more of it here in Ontario. And so we think that between a combination of more wind and solar and buying hydro from Quebec, combined with more conservation, we really need to drive down our demand. We think between those factors over time, we could have a 100% renewable grid. That's when we think we need to be   Dan Seguin  19:56 Gideon wondering if you could share with us what our The biggest challenges or obstacles we are facing now, in order to improve how we source energy in a post coal energy world, what is needed to overcome these?   Gideon Forman  20:15 I think we probably have to stop calling natural gas, natural gas, you know, the word natural gas makes it sound like it's all just delightful, right? It's like organic, organic fruits and vegetables, natural gas is a fossil fuel. And we have to remember that. And I think we have to put the climate crisis front and center. And one of the things that's getting in the way of that is this belief that, you know, that natural gas is, is reasonable, both for producing electricity and for heating our homes, we do overtime have to move away from those things. Those are big challenges. We also have concerns with nuclear. I mean, there's concerns about cost of nuclear, it's getting increasingly expensive. There's concerns about what we do with the nuclear waste. I mean, I don't know what community in Canada that particularly wants to house nuclear waste in its community. And I understand that, you know, we don't have a really long term, solid solution for nuclear waste anywhere on the planet that I'm aware of. So that's a very big concern. communities don't want that waste. And even if we're able to store it for, say, 500 years or 1000 years, some of that nuclear waste is radioactive for hundreds of 1000s of years. So that's a big problem. So I don't think nuclear is a long term solution as well, that's that's our view. But there are some that think that and so I think that that's another obstacle that we have to that we have to confront as well, those who think that nuclear is a climate solution, I my own view is that it's not a long term solution. The other piece that we have to remember around nuclear is that you have to mine for the uranium, the uranium that is used to fire the nuclear plant comes out of the earth, and you have to mined for it and the mining of uranium is itself very carbon intensive, you have to use very heavy machinery that burns diesel fuel to get it that uranium. And so the claims that are made about nuclear being, you know, completely clean and green, we believe are not accurate. So, but there is this belief that nuclear is emissions free. And so I think that's one of the obstacles as well.   Dan Seguin  22:25 Well, you've given us a picture of success and how we've managed to overcome these challenges of removing coal from our provincial supply mix. Ontario's electricity supply is expected to evolve over the next few decades as industry and consumers needs change. Gideon, what do you think the future holds? And what would you like to see?   Gideon Forman  22:52 Well, I think the future really doesforesee much more in the way of renewables. I mean, what's really exciting about renewable energy is twofold. In my view, first of all, we're seeing major economies I mentioned Germany, but it's also places like Britain, Scandinavia, China, these large economies are increasingly powering themselves with renewables, much of it wind and solar. I'm not saying that they're at 100% yet, but it is astounding just how much of it is now powered by renewable energy. So that suggests to me that it's really practical for a country like ours, which has a relatively small population, and a huge wind and solar resource to be able to power ourselves 100% renewable. I mean, I think for example, on the prairies, southern Alberta, Manitoba, Saskatchewan. It's just a world class solar and wind resource. I mean, in Saskatchewan, for example, Regina is the is the sunniest capital in Canada. saskatoons motto is Saskatoon shines? Well, that's because there's an enormous amount of solar power on those Southern prairie regions. And so that suggests to me that if we wanted to, we really could power most, if not all of our electricity needs with renewables. So that's one thing that's very encouraging to me, and I'd like to see in the future, and the other piece is just the cost that I mentioned, but I think it really is important to to reiterate it is that the cost is so favorable with renewable energy, so it's practical, and it's something we can afford to do. Okay, Gideon,   Dan Seguin  24:25 are you ready to close this off with some rapid fire questions?   24:29 Okay.   Dan Seguin  24:30 What is your favorite word?   Gideon Forman  24:34 My favorite word is imagination and creativity. Sorry, two words creativity and imagination.   Dan Seguin  24:39 Now, what is the one thing you can't live without?   Gideon Forman  24:43 I don't think I could live without my kids.   Dan Seguin  24:45 What habit or hobby. Have you picked up during shelter in place?   Gideon Forman  24:51 I do a lot more bike riding now. Actually. Yeah, yeah, I used to be much more of a walker. But now I'm a big cyclist.   Dan Seguin  24:58 If you could have one superpower. Would it be   Gideon Forman  25:02 just to be more chill just to be a bit more calm? I'd love to have the superpower just to be able to call myself immediately.   Dan Seguin  25:10 If you could turn back time and talk to your 18 year old self, what would you tell him?   Gideon Forman  25:16 Well, I think I'd probably say, Excuse me, I think I'd probably say to my 18 year old self experiment a bit more, you know, try a few more things that are a bit out of your comfort zone. Yeah, I think I was a bit too cautious as a teenager.   Dan Seguin  25:30 And lastly, what do you currently find most interesting in your sector?   Gideon Forman  25:36 Well, the thing I find most interesting and also most exciting is the youth climate movement. The the young people under Greta tunberg. And other young people, not just Greta, the sweetest young woman but the the the worldwide youth climate movement, young people saying we have to take action on climate change and getting out in the streets. I found that really impressive and really moving.   Dan Seguin  26:01 Well, Gideon, we've reached the end of another episode of The think energy podcasts. Again, I want to thank you so much for joining us today. I hope you had a lot of fun.   Gideon Forman  26:12 Yeah, thank you so much. It was great chance to relive those days of the coal phase out. Thank you.   Dan Seguin  26:20 Thank you for joining us today. I truly hope you enjoyed this episode of The think energy podcast. For past episodes, make sure you visit our website hydro ottawa.com backslash podcast. Lastly, if you found value in this podcast, be sure to subscribe. Anyway, this podcast is a wrap. Cheers, everyone.

Québec produces 32% of Canada’s total power generated from all sources, but is only responsible for 1% of the country’s GHG emissions linked to electric utilities. What lessons can we learn from Hydro Québec’s strategic approach to innovation, climate change, expansion and technology - and how they fit together to create one of the world’s leaders in a decarbonized future? To help guide us, we’ve invited the individual responsible for developing Hydro Quebec’s overall innovation vision, strategy and R&D efforts, David Murray, Chief Innovation Officer of Hydro‑Québec. Related Content & Links: David Murray Twitter: @DavidMurrayHQ Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-murray-aa636666/ Hydro Quebec Twitter: @hydroquebec Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/hydro-quebec/ Website: https://www.hydroquebec.com/residential/ --- Transcript: Dan Seguin  00:42 Everyone welcome back to another episode of The ThinkEnergy podcast. Today, we're going to talk about LaBelle province, Quebec, more specifically Hydro Quebec, one of the largest electric utilities in Canada, and how their innovation and clean energy practices are also helping to make the world a beautiful place. Hydro Quebec has 62 hydro power generating stations and 28 reservoirs, making it the largest hydroelectric power generator in the country. In 2019, the province generated almost 200 terawatt hours of electricity, with hydro power alone, and with 500,000 Lakes and 4500 rivers, Quebec has more hydroelectric potential, Quebec produces 32% of Canada's total power generated from all sources, but is only responsible for 1% of the country's GHG emissions link to electric utilities. What's more, Quebec residents have the lowest residential rates in North America. electricity prices are nearly twice as high in other provinces, and four times higher in places like New York and Boston. And Quebec is doing it all with 99% clean and renewable energy. What is Hydro Quebec's secret sauce? Some chalk it up to hydro Quebec's commitment to innovation, research and development. Hydro Quebec has two state of the art research centers known as  Institut de recherche d’Hydro-Québec (IREQ). That's driving breakthroughs in the field of energy, particularly the provinces electrification of transportation, energy storage, and energy efficiency. More than any electric utility, Hydro Quebec is setting its sights on growth opportunities within and beyond borders, including an agreement to supply Massachusetts with 9.45 terawatts of power per year starting in 2022. So here's today's big question. What lessons can we learn about Hydro Quebec strategic approach to innovation, climate change, expansion and technology and how they fit together to create one of the world's leaders in a decarbonized future. To help us navigate the hallways of this behemoth. We've invited the individual responsible for developing Hydro Quebec overall innovation vision, strategy, and overseeing the company's r&d efforts. He is no stranger to large corporations, as he held senior positions in companies like Bilbao, GE Flextronics, Nortel networks, and Rolls Royce. Dear listeners, please welcome David Murray, Chief Innovation Officer of Hydro Quebec and the executive vice president of generation. Welcome, David. Let's dive into Hydro Quebec transition towards a greener and more efficient power system. What have been the biggest drivers for change and innovation that has led the organization to where it's at today?   David Murray  04:21 Oh, that's a great question. So obviously, we are privileged at Hydro Quebec. I think the first thing that we need to say is that we're privileged because we carry on what has been done over 75 years ago. So some of our predecessors actually decided to go in green energy hydro power. And actually it was a debate at the time because nuclear nuclear electricity was was probably the alternative. And we're looking after to have these decisions who were lucky to have this already. But not because we have this is that we have you know to stay put and not do anything so innovation is key for different aspects not number one is actually specially today with the environment environment that needs it more than ever, so for us to push the boundaries and in greener Quebec, because yes, we are privileged, but there's still room for opportunities if we think about transportation, for example, second aspect is obviously, sometimes a bit sensitive of profitability. So we're privileged to have, you know, very, very low rates. And obviously, not only to export our electricity, but also for having more of the electrification and in Quebec province. So profitability would say, is the second aspect that we need to push, push the boundaries and in terms of innovation, and and i would say, the last aspect is actually the social aspect. So we have to be there in terms of keeping the rates as low as possible for the Quebecers. So for us, it brings us to a position where we need to innovate, we need to think differently. And actually, we need to push ourselves in defining the energetic Quebec of tomorrow, and this is what the team is doing. And obviously, we're privileged because we have our research institute, where we have about 500, you know, scientists working day in and day out on pushing the envelope. So we're we're actually probably in good position. And it is quite exciting to see what's going on right now at their research institute.   Dan Seguin  06:23 Let's move on to the next question. the profitability of Hydro Quebec's operations allow you to pay a significant dividend to your shareholder, the Quebec government. Can you outline for us how this benefits constituents and contributes to the Quebec economy?   David Murray  06:41 Yeah, so, roughly every year we do contribute you know, if I include taxes, if I include the rights on water, we contribute about 3.5-3.6 billion to the to the Quebec government. So which which is not, you know, quite quite important for for obviously, for the government specially in those times where, you know, our different governments are getting some inventions helping out into the pandemic situation. So, so this is this is what number two is what's important to understand also is that we do invest quite large amount of money into the Quebec province. So for example, we give roughly $3.4-3.5 billion of contracts into Quebec economy, year over year, so you're talking, you know, roughly seven plus billion dollars of return that we're, we're generating either tax or we're generating work into the Quebec province. So we are certainly an important aspect of the Quebec government.   Dan Seguin  07:43 David. Last year, the federal government released a report stating that hydrogen will play a key part in Canada's plan for net zero emissions by 2050. What role will green hydrogen play in Quebec and its future energy mix?   David Murray  08:02 So Hydrogen, you know, it's certainly something that's gonna, that is on the rise in terms of visibility, major investments going on through the world, if you think about Japan, you know, the Olympics are supposed to be, you know, based on hydrogen. Germany is also very, very focused in terms of investments and more and more now in North America. So obviously, it's going to be the same in Quebec. So and we already moved on a couple of projects of we've announced lately a projects in the petrol chemical area 88 or 90 megawatt electrolyzer that we've we've put in place, so you can, you can imagine the the size of the project, which is key, and there's another 20 megawatts, that we're also pushing in big on coal for another company. So we're roughly already involved with 100 megawatts and in terms of hydrogen. So for sure, that's going to be key. The other aspect of the Hydro Quebec is looking into and questioning itself is about transportation, so transportation for larger vehicles, I would say so smaller vehicles is going to be more most probably electric. Meanwhile, there's a lot of debate on this. But I mean, the momentum is there with the the the technology right now. So but hydrogen, I think is going to be a use for larger vehicles. And we're looking into this. We have different projects that they were looking into, but at the same time, we need to do it in the right time. Because you need the ecosystem to be there. So but at the same time, if you don't do it, either ecosystem is not going to be there. So it's kind of a vicious circle, but definitely and we believe that the hydrogen is going to play a role into reducing the GHG emission and our belief is that transportation is certainly going to be key into that aspect.   Dan Seguin  09:50 Now since 1970 hydro Quebec's Research Institute IREQ has been developing advanced technologies and applications tailored to the energy sector to help improve the performance of its power systems and better serve customers. How and why was IREQ founded? What is its purpose? And what are the pillars that drive its vision.   David Murray  10:19 So I'm on a research center, celebrated 50 years last year. So we've been, we've been existing since the 70s, early 70s, late 60s, so the idea actually was created the based on bringing large amounts of electricity from up north to the south, because typically, if you look at history, so you're gonna have your your dams are producing, you're producing center, close to, you know, where it's going to be used. But Quebec was built in a different way of the large amount of water is up north. So we had to, you know, be creative. And this is where Mr. Shambo with Research Center was put in place in order to find ways to bring the electricity from up north to south. And we needed large, large ways to transportation line. So this is where the 735 kV line created. So it really changed the way of doing business. You know, and instead of passing, like, multiple lines, you had one line that could do it, do it all, so that that was actually critical, and in the energy transition for Hydro Quebec. But now the research institute keeps pushing it. So we, we want to, again, we want to keep the boundaries, higher and push the limit in terms of electrification. And, you know, if you think that the system and the energy sector has been pretty stable, the way it's been doing business year over year, and now we are we're part of energy transition. So our IREQ, our research center is going to become key in in a couple of aspects. Number one, resilience over network. So obviously, with the climate changes, and everything that's happening, I mean, you have to, you know, think differently about how you're going to be building your network. Second is efficiency, obviously, we're privileged because we have one of the lowest rates, you know, in on the planet. But that doesn't mean that we have to take it for granted. So the team is working on on finding ways to do our lines better: different materials, for example, with bush lien, also into Hydro Quebec, in order to, you know, build some processes they'll be keeping rates as low as possible. Number three, is going to be the energy transition, I was talking about it earlier, this is crazy, you know, we're living something that's as big as the telco changes, I would say, with the energy transition, you know, just go back 5 years, you know, the world is completely different. And we're probably just at the beginning of it, where, you know, we're going to bring IoT devices and a new technology, new ways of producing decentralization behind the meter. So, I mean, there's so many things happening now. So there's so many variables. So it's important for researchers to think about this, and what's the best for the Quebecers with the best in the network to accommodate all these, these changes. And last but not least, is really working, you know, with data with software computing, in terms of focusing and giving an amazing customer experience. So customer services is key. So now we're going more and more about the experience, I would say, and we had lost that I would say, if I go back five years ago with Hydro Quebec now we've done a lot of progress. So there's still still some ways where we could we could improve, but our research center is working on software and in artificial intelligence in order to push the boundaries and bring us to the next level.   Dan Seguin  13:58 Okay, let's keep on going here with with technology and innovation. I'm fascinated about your robotics department, and in particular, how you're leveraging drones that have the capability to land on energized conductors. Can you tell us about your robotics program and how these drones you developed are helping you with some very dangerous jobs?   David Murray  14:26 Oh, you're touching a very important subject because I am a drone pilot. So I'm fascinated by drones. So I have my license. And I fly them once in a while. And a couple years ago, two - three years ago, I was at the Research Institute and I was walking by robotic department, the guys were playing with the drone, I could see them on the table. And I was like, Okay, I'm going there. I gotta go and see. And so I meet the team over there and telling them you know, bragging a little bit saying I'm a drone pilot, and everything says, Oh, that's cool. So, and I said, so Okay, so come here, come here and try that, you know, if you want to fly the drone, you know, I'm like, oh, okay, that could be interesting. And then I asked the price of the drone, and said, forget about it. So we're going to keep the experts doing what they do, and I'll stay on this side of the table. So drones, obviously, you know, these are new technologies, we have developed our robotic team different different tools. Now, I would say to help us out so we have line rangers for example, you know, as a spy that goes on the lines and can spec miles and miles of lines, which is great, because it's safer, we don't have to put people into this, you don't have to, you know, hijack these are employees and to make sure that the lines are okay, so these devices now can can make analysis on you know, online, and you can take, you know, recording pictures, whatever you want x rays, so this is crazy. Now, next step is really to bring your own drones. So, drones can can land on 735 kV lines, do inspections, and you can imagine the speed of doing things. So it goes back to what I was saying earlier. So you know, your health and safety is improved your efficiency and resilience of the network is there and you're doing it efficiently. So let's say that's helping us on reducing the rates and keeping rates low. So we're looking at different aspect now. So we're using it also on on dam inspection. So we're up north going so before use this trap the guy you know and go and inspect the the side of the dam and everything. So now you just buy the drone that takes you know, a fraction of the time, it's safer. And you get the you can do more at a certain level at the same time. So this is this is this is key. And the next thing that we're looking into is actually a fighter dome over stations, power stations and look at thermographic images to be able to detect if there are any weaknesses or pre defects so we can we can be more effective. So again, you can imagine, you know, the speed that you can do versus you know, having having people stop people working, you know, disconnect the power into this, and it's very inefficient. So now we got to use these technologies, so quite exciting. But I'm not going to fly these drones. I'm going to let the experts do it.   Dan Seguin  17:10 For many years, David hydro Quebec's pursuit to electrify transportation has revolutionized the electric vehicle sector in the province while supporting provincial decarbonisation. It's safe to say that the electrification of transportation is a major growth driver for Hydro Quebec. What are some of the examples of synergies you develop to help drive the mobility sector?   David Murray  17:39 Yeah, so I would say just, it's a major contributor on the growth, I would say, it's an important contributor, it's not that big for us. I mean, if you think about you know, having all the electricity, if you have 1 million vehicles,  if you have multiple vehicles for let's say, 4 million, it'll be like whatever 12 with our so when you think that, you know, we can we can produce over 200 years. So that's, that's important, but it's not huge in terms of in terms of volumes. But quite, we're still pushing it, and we're pushing it, because it's gonna help reducing the a GHG emissions so. So for us, it's key that we're, we stay a leader and in Canada and in the Americas in terms of EV. So we have partnership with our governments, obviously, that giving you know subventions in order for getting the cars. We actually, in terms of working out and making it easy for customers, we actually acquired a company called the Axso. So we've launched a new software in last June, and actually you just enter the spec of your cars, and we'll tell you where to go with it and what's the best route? Where are the stations? And we actually, it was interesting, because once one, when we launched that, on Apple, actually, Apple called us to say what's going on with this software. So because we hit like number seven on the day or something. So pretty happy about this. So this is this is going to be key. And the next step is working. Obviously, we're you know, partnering is working with the Quebec government. So we're looking at next steps now to increase the number of recharge stations that we have throughout Quebec. So 2500 fast charging stations that we've announced by 2030. And we want to add on top of that, so we want to make sure that people feel secure about, about taking electric cars and going wherever they want. So that's, that's quite exciting. And obviously, the environment needs it. So as fast as we can do it, the better it will be.   Dan Seguin  19:52 Let's move to renewables. It's clear that Hydro Quebec has become a world benchmark in the generation of clean, renewable energy. It also plays a key role in the development of battery technologies for electric vehicles, as well as electric power trains, Hydro Quebec saw EV's as an important source of revenue growth for its organization. And as early as 2012, you've been very active in deploying the country's first public charging network. Can you maybe talk to us about electric circuit? And what's next for it?   David Murray  20:32 Yeah, so electric circuit, like I was saying, we're going to push a higher number of recharge stations and and increase, increase the confidence. What we're doing also, in terms of the, all the electricity, electrification of Quebec, we're pushing the boundaries also, where we believe that there are some roadblocks and for example, if you think about electrification of larger vehicles, like school buses, for example. And one thing that we're looking into is trying to remove the roadblock of infrastructure investments. It's all nice, because all you know, sometimes you go in the news, and oh, someone bought so many buses, electric, which is great. It's great stuff. But behind it, I mean, there's all the infrastructure, and this is this is a roadblock because it's major, major investments that these companies have to do today. It's very simple school buses, they just put deisel in, and they just go. But now if you go electric, the game is changing. So the stations needing to understand, you know, when do they recharge, what's the cycle, what's the best timing of it, not, you know, overkill, all the capex that you need in order to make it make it work. And this is somewhere that we're working on something that we're working on. So we want to put Hydro Quebec in the middle of that, working with different partners. And to ease all the capex that's required for these, these school buses, throughout the the Quebec province. And this is going to be good also, for public transportation. So you know, it's same thing for them. I mean, it's major, now they have these big garages. So when you think you know, the number of school buses you have in Ottawa, for example. I mean, imagine when you have to convert all this to electricity, I mean, the guys upstairs, they're going to look at this as demand, that's going to take a lot of capex, right how we're going to do this and in buying you the bus, you have to you have to have all the investment that's going to be done behind itself. So that's key. And this is something that we want to tackle, and we're working now, and we're working with the Quebec government, but we want to be an enabler into this. And that's what we that's where we're focused on which is, which is quite interesting. And last point, I would say is, we can't forget that I took it back as develop electric motors. So we had the subdivision company called Tmfour, which is in boucherville, right here, near Montreal on South Shore. And we've developed amazing electric motors and we actually sold a portion of the company. So we still own like 45% of the company, but we made a partnership with Dana and in the US. And Dana is like, you know, a large company that's been there for over 100 years. So they selected our motor and now we're deploying these borders around around the globe. So that's, that's really something that's actually pretty cool. So to have Hydro Quebec, participating around the globe, and electrifying, the large, it's for larger vehicles, but it's actually quite interesting. And I had the I had the pleasure to try one of the vehicles actually. So on in Shawenigen, we have, we have this place where we built two houses, where we wanted to push the boundaries about the energy transition. And we had our scientists from Research Institute and the guys go crazy, have fun, and we have one whole house that's decoys that can you know, do the comparison with the house that's fully equipped and, and it was interesting to see all they've done. So we have solar panels on the roof, we have battery in the basement. We have you know, all the technology, then IoT, and thermostat lights and everything that came you can imagine. And  it's exciting to see. And in the living room, you have this major screen like TV screen, but you take a tablet just by opening up and then you have your whole network. And in the garage. You also have a device that can take your car electricity. So the we had the we have the Jeep Cherokee that we converted and we put our motor, a tm four engine in there. And I had the luxury to drive it around and park it in the garage and connect the car to the house. And then now the car was actually a provider for the house. So you can imagine now if there's an outage your car can become your battery. So it's quite interesting and then the scientists done you know all kinds of simulation as we were there with their CEO  at the time, and all the management team, and we showed what we what we had, which led today to our first microgrid. So when Lac Megantic in Quebec had a big tragedy and a lot of people that died when the oil train derailed and so we had meetings with the mayor, fine. And we decided to spin that and having Lac Megantic like a futuristic city. And now we have, we are connecting. As we speak, we are connecting all these devices and all these houses that we've done. So we had to ensure when again, and now we have a copy paste version that are being built in Lac Megantic, of which we're going to be using all this technology. So quite exciting to see how we're turning it in now this is going to help in terms of electrification of the grid, actually,   Dan Seguin  25:52 it's very interesting. Okay, now, hoping you can shed light here. With electrification comes more demand on capex electricity grid, particularly during peak periods. What is your outlook telling you about forecasted demand? And what kind of infrastructure will be required, if any, to support the electric future?   David Murray  26:16 Yeah, so obviously, we've been looking at the possibilities,  if we want to go and have Quebec at achieving the GHG emission, there's going to be a need for reducing for increasing the level of electricity consumption. So our distributor is looking into this on a yearly basis to see how that growth is coming. And we've seen that growth over the past couple of years. So definitely if we want to achieve all the possibilities, not only for Quebec, but also for the different provinces, as we are large exporter of our energy, so I think there's going to be a great opportunities for us. So we're looking at different aspects. But before we go, actually in saying, we're going to produce and add capacity, the number one priority is actually to find ways to reduce the consumption. So energy efficiency is key. And this is something that we're looking into. So we started, we launched a sub company that's called Hilo which is going behind the meter is actually erasing the demand on peak timings, so And actually it's rewards. So we're asking people to participate, and they have the options to participate or not, but actually, if they got the equipment, it's because they want to use it. And it gives us you know, opportunities when there's high demand an opportunity to reduce our consumption and not use for example, buy electricity from external means, or start fossil peakers in order to supply the demand because there are a couple of hours during peak times that we have, we have challenges so that it's only a few hours. And we've launched that. And it's been very, very successful, actually. So now we can erase. So you can imagine that it's all it's a winner because it prevents you to invest. So push investments. And obviously, if if you do invest, there's going to be an impact on your rates. So there's got to this thing gonna pay off. So good for good for the rates, because we're, we're pushing investments. Second is good for the environment, because we're not building lines through forests. And it's never popular. I mean, he prayed everybody wants electricity, but nobody wants it in their yard. So it's, it's always, you know, a catch 22 trying to explain that to people. So that's key number three is actually it's good for the customer base. Because imagine that the end the consumer is reducing his bill at the end. So you're gonna say, Well, yeah, of course, he's reducing his power. But there's ways that we're programming this where you can pre-heat your house couple of hours before the peak dining, and then it goes through the peak, and it helps up everything. And that peak is very expensive, like for all the reasons we were saying earlier, so this is win win win. And this is something that we want to push towards, in terms of investment. Going forward, obviously, we have we've built our first solar park, so we have two solar parks that we started, Wind is becoming also very competitive. So but wind and solar is for energy, not for power, then people don't always make the difference between the energy and power. So energy is the consumption you have every every second that you're going but the power is when everybody gets home at five o'clock and puts everything on that then put all the breakers on then the consuming everything spikes. So this we have the sustain not only the energy that goes with the power that goes in, and that's that's where HILO is gonna is going to be a key into making making the future and we have very interesting projects coming with HILO and so now we started With thermostat for example, we're but we're coming with, with other stuff that we've built in our house. And Sherwinagan, that's going to change the way of the building. And if we can change the way of consuming the electricity.   Dan Seguin  30:11 Let's move on to the next question. hydro Quebec's road towards reconciliation has involved economic inclusion of the First Nations, and the creation of opportunities for current and future generations. wondering if you could talk to us about the importance of that relationship. And the 200 megawatt wind farm to be built in Quebec, Cote Nord region.   David Murray  30:39 Yeah, so obviously, working together with the communities is key. And we've been doing so for for many, many years. So we've done many projects throughout the Quebec province. So this is not new we have, you know, over 40 programe, that we over the last decades that we've signed up with the, with the different communities. So this is not new for us, and is the same thing for the 200 megawatts on Cote Nord all up with project. So obviously, as we see, there's going to be a need for energy and power going forward. So these are very important projects that we we are pushing, pushing through and working with the communities on a day to day basis is certainly a key aspect to make it work. And we've done so on this projects. And you can see that the now we're we're we're ready to install the then the wind farm and to have the energy produced for us. So this is key for us.   Dan Seguin  31:40 As stated earlier, David, we are in the midst of an energy transition. It encompasses transformation in power generation, transmission and distribution, as well as energy consumption habits worldwide. How is Hydro Quebec planning to seize growth opportunities in the province and beyond Canada's borders, like the power agreement in Massachusetts? What is again, the ultimate goal and vision?   David Murray  32:10 So when we started the plan a couple years ago, we had surpluses, you know, in the, in all the dams that we had, and we had the Romaine, the four dams in the Romaine river that was being built, and which was 1500 megawatts, obviously, when when we started if you go back couple years ago, we were seeing a huge growth in Quebec. This is why we had to build Romaine and that growth income as as timely as as we're expecting. So it gave us an opportunity to use that electricity and to share it with with our neighbors, which was we've done year over year, we're exporting about roughly 30 kilowatt hour of electricity, which is quite significant. And this is something that we're doing to you know, New Brunswick, Ontario, obviously, all the different states around us and north northeast. So this is this is key. So for us, it's great opportunity, it brings back money, you know, in the Quebec province obviously, but it also helps the different states and provinces to reduce their GHG emissions. So for us, this is quite an important deal for us as it It reduces our surplus brings back money, so it's good for the balance, commercial balance and the Quebec province and contributes to helping the government in terms of profitability, and this is money that goes back into the Quebec province. So these are projects that are key and in in making the GHG emission and bringing good profitability for the Quebec province. So very, very important for us.   Dan Seguin  33:49 Moving on, what role does energy storage play in your deployment and supply of renewable energy?   David Murray  33:58 Yeah, energy storage is is also very exciting. So we're talking about the Innovation Development so we've been working on a battery for the past couple years, I would say a mega watt hour battery so large size battery I would say if you can have an image it's like a container size that goes on a truck or so and these batteries are going to become so important. Because again, when you place these batteries at the right place in network, reduce congestion and it pushes the same logic, it pushes some investments that you need to do second aspect it's sometimes you have reserves on mine and you can remove that reserve also with with the battery, so batteries will become an important tool I would say as much as a transformer, for example, our power line so become the base into the grid of the future or the design grid of the future and So we have our own battery, which is as it's a, its own recipe, which we believe is safer than any battery that can exist, where it's so safe in our mind that we will actually put it on the roof of Hydro Quebec, in early 2022 you know, with solar panels and capture electricity, and you're never going to see this, if you go on the field, and you see these batteries that are existing, they're huge with, like, 4 backup systems, and so many protections, and you know, it's very heavy and very costly. So for us, we believe that our technology is going to become more and more present, because of its particularity of being safe. So it will be key. And you can see now, you know, all the vendors going out on the market. I mean, there's a there are a lot now asking for storage applications of which we've launched this is why we've launched another sub company. So we have a few but it's called EVLO. And this is a, this is actually a sub company that we want to use for our own network. So we've already deployed some in the on the Quebec network. But we've also won our first contract outside now. So we were installing as we speak in France right now, I would interject as a partner, so this is going to become bigger and bigger for us.   Dan Seguin  36:29 Okay, I'm wondering if you could now expand on opportunities and or challenges the pandemic brought to the forefront for Hydro Quebec? Has there been an impact on export and growth or any other surprises?   David Murray  36:47 Yeah, obviously, we had, like, everybody, it was a tough year. And we, we've, we've faced some reductions of volume, because obviously, when companies, you know, are stopping their production and everything, there is an impact. So we've seen a slight reduction on the company side and industrial side, they would say, residential will ramp up, obviously, because everybody's working from home so it transferred, but it's not the same so, they had an impact on, you know, bad credit, like any company, so we've done, it's roughly $90 million of impact that we had. So you know, people are having a hard time to pay their bills and everything. So we were present to try to help on that aspect. So we had to look at payment terms, also, we help them, you know, helping out payment terms, and we will also reduce our payment terms on our side. So, you know, to bring cash faster to the other company. So with the cash to cash cycle is a bit longer, but it was good for everybody. So we've done it for the community and different companies, and the different people in the Quebec province. The opportunities? Well, we've looked at the you know, resilience and be more independent with with more and more important on the greenhouse production, I would say. So this is where when we launched an initiative to reduce the rates on on greenhouse production in Quebec province, so the which is great. So we give a big, big reduction for people to produce, you know, local vegetables and fruits, which was, which was actually key. This is an example of, you know, decision that we've looked at to help out. And the other aspect, I would say, is for different projects that we're having, so for example, we've announced a major revamp of our dams, for example, and we re-questioned the bids that we had, and we have some other major suppliers to say, give it to give us different options, and what would be the cost if they would do for example, engineering in Quebec, instead of instead of being done outside outside the country. And we've made some changes in some some of the plans that we have based on that, either it was, you know, some engineering was done in Quebec or in Canada, then it was it was a better deal for us at the time to stimulate and give more work and towards the Quebec and Canada. And in terms of selection. So this is like the stuff that we've done. And now it creates a, you know, different mindset internally. And obviously we have we still have the same tendency to look into the different projects as we speak.   Dan Seguin  39:30 In addition to seizing growth opportunities in Quebec and beyond, increasing exports and introducing energy efficiency initiatives like HILO, Hydro Quebec, residential rates are the lowest in North America. And business rates are always ranking among the most competitive on the continent. How have you successfully struck this balance?   David Murray  39:55 Well, the balance obviously we've looked, again, the base that was done In the last couple of years was asked to carry. So finding the ways to keep the rates as low as possible is, is something internally that we're making a large focus has been a lot of changes that happened in Hydro Quebec and the last couple of years. So sometimes, I mean, I always say that there's two major transition at Hydro Quebec that we live right now. The first one is the energy transition, the second one is within Hydro Quebec's wall. So all the synergy that has been done in the efficiency that has been done, bringing lean thinking in the way we're doing business. So, you know, we have over 2600 cells of lean right now a cell would be, you know, employing employees, with their, with their managers and up in the office. So, where we have stand up meetings, and we have six pillars, and we're looking at, you know, health and safety and productivity and employee in ward issues and raising issues to the next level, if it's not done and bring it back in the next day. So a lot of work that has been done, and we can't keep take that for granted. And, but it's been, it's been a huge transformation that happened. And this, this has made the significant changes and helping out in keeping our rates down. So year over year, you know, you're facing up salary increase, you're facing up, you know, material buy purchasing increase. So you have to balance this out. And this is our way to to do to do differently. And the second thing is innovation, obviously, still trying new ways, you know, where we were talking about drones and all these technologies, obviously, they're they're helping out in making that bounce. And for us, it's, it's very important that we keep these rates down, we're happy. We're proud, and we want to, we want to keep it this way. So it's good for people in Quebec, it's bringing opportunities for businesses to come and install themselves in Quebec for not only the rate but also because it's green. So we have more and more demand, for example, data centers, for example. So these are great opportunities for Quebec, and it creates at the same time, important, you know, very good job in technology. So this is something that we, we push and we want to keep going.   Dan Seguin  42:15 Okay. Finally, the rise in digital technologies has brought sweeping changes in how we all live. As we know, Millennials are now North America's largest cohort. They have now overtaken boomers as the largest population group in North America. These digital natives grew up with chatbots, smart speakers and smartphones. With that in mind, how has Hydro Quebec engaged with this generation? Where do you see the greatest opportunities for Hydro Quebec?   David Murray  42:50 Yeah, it's a major shift. And I live it at home to, so I have a millennials and I have a younger generation pushing. So she calls me that the boomer, I keep telling, I'm not a boomer, but I guess I'm acting like a boomer, I don't know. But I guess it is important to, to think differently, and to bring them on board, without forgetting the base without forgetting what the boomer,  our generation is done fast, I think, you know, it's an evolution. And there's nothing good or bad, it's always the mixture of things that makes it better. But obviously, we have to think differently, because it's a different, you know, technology is all over the place, whether the younger generation, so there's been a lot of changes in to our communication team. This team is quite amazing. Keeping connection, through media, web, you name it, Facebook, and all these new software that see that that's where my daughter's gonna say, I'm an old generation, because I named Facebook and Facebook is not for us, but it is what it is Snapchat and all this stuff. But so we've done a lot to keep the connections. Our social media team is actually amazing. So we've done quite an impression, sometimes answering some of the questions answering some of the tough questions were sometimes being criticized, but bringing a twist, which is attracting the younger generation and we're getting more and more popular and in some of these tweaks that's happening on the web. So we've had it also added two youtubers into our company. So two guys trying to explain to the younger generation, you know, how electricity works and I was saying about connecting the old and the future. It is important because nobody really understands how electricity is produced. They just put the switch on and you know, they believe it's happening from from the sky, I guess. So, you know, to make them remember that the how This was built in the past sort of pioneers has provided us that luxury that we have here in Quebec. So this is, this is actually very, very interesting to see and having these young guys through YouTube, explain to them, you know, how it works and how electricity is produced so to bring the connection between the the old world and the New World, I would say that. And the rest, like I was saying, bringing them together with the social, we have over 20 social media accounts that the team is working on, and trying to connect the new generation and we have them in-house as they're coming in house in DC, what's going on there, they're helping out the old, older generation like me to connect with the younger generation and obviously, pushes the boundaries. And it's great, because they're also pushing us into different direction, which is, which is key because at the end, you know, they want to come and work for a company that's innovative. And that's, you know, to the level of what they're expecting this we have to we have to adapt.   Dan Seguin  46:00 Okay, David, are you ready to close us off with some rapid fire questions?   David Murray  46:07 Anything - That's good.   Dan Seguin  46:09 What is your favorite word?   David Murray  46:12 efficiency.   Dan Seguin  46:13 What is your ideal electric vision for Hydro Quebec's future?   David Murray  46:20 Electric vision is also is everything that's energy transition. IoT,  behind the meters efficient energy efficiency, I would say,   Dan Seguin  46:30 what is the one thing you can't live without?   David Murray  46:34 My phone   Dan Seguin  46:35 What habit or hobby? Have you picked up during a shelter in place?   David Murray  46:41 You know, this is quite interesting. I guess the older generation. Two things. Number one is vinyl record. So I don't know for reasons I started to go back on vinyl. And so and once in a while a good old way of going too easy. Now, you know, it just click and it comes from the cloud. But just to get up and and put the vinyl and you know, after like five minutes, it's done. You got to stand up and go, but I guess it's my old age can kick in. So that's number one. And number two is actually, you know, tastes from the past. So my, my spouse was asking me what I wanted for Christmas. And I said I want a Atari 2600. And she said what? You mean? You mean the PlayStation five? Right? I said no, no, I want Atari 2600. She's where the hell do I buy this? Five? No, it just was just fine. And she did. So now just going back in time. And so I don't know. I guess pandemic has brought us back to our roots and to the some of the basics so I don't know, must make me feel comfortable to play pitfall I guess during Christmas, I'll have never played since but it's okay. I have it if I want to play it. And it's mine told everybody Don't touch it. Don't break it.   Dan Seguin  48:03 Now, if you could have one superpower, what would it be?   David Murray  48:10 Fly? I guess it goes faster. The typical, you know, I've asked that question. Everybody breaks, it breaks, it breaks the mold. And by saying I want to cure all illness. And then nobody else can speak after that. So that would be probably the political answer. But fly is my answer.   Dan Seguin  48:24 And David, if you could turn back time, and talk to your 18 year old self? What would you tell him?   David Murray  48:32 Don't change anything. Just don't change anything.   Dan Seguin  48:38 And lastly, what do you currently find most interesting about public life?   David Murray  48:46 Most Interesting? I'll be honest, like and public life is actually sometimes the difficulty of media I would say. So. You know, I took it back is like 13 times in the papers every day, and sometimes not the way for for for other reasons than good reasons. I would say not all the time. But it's a I would say that's probably the thing that's after five years in the industry when you coming from a private company. You're coming public, obviously, you know what, well, I didn't know what to expect. Everybody told me, but it is what it is. And it's, it's okay. I mean, it's part of it's part of the business.   Dan Seguin  49:26 Well, David, we've reached the end of another episode of The think energy podcasts. Thank you so much for joining me today and I hope you had a lot of fun. Cheers, my friend. Thank you for joining us today. I truly hope you enjoyed this episode of The think energy podcast. For past episodes, make sure you visit our website hydroottawa.com/podcast. Lastly, if you found value in this podcast, be sure to subscribe. Anyway, this podcast is a wrap. Cheers, everyone.

Passive homes - how do they compare to a so-called “regular” house? And what can homeowners expect with respect to their carbon footprint and future energy bills? To talk about these high performance homes and the steps it takes to shift to varying degrees of eco-conscious living, we've invited Casey Gray, the founder of an award winning sustainable building company, The Conscious Builder, and the host of the Conscious Builder podcast. Related Content & Links:  Casey Grey Twitter: @CaseyAGrey Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/caseygrey/ The Conscious Builder Twitter: @BuildConscious Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-conscious-builder/  Website: https://www.theconsciousbuilder.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the_conscious_builder  Resources The Conscious Builder podcast: https://www.theconsciousbuilder.com/podcast  -- Transcript:   Dan Seguin  00:43 Welcome back, everyone to our latest episode of The ThinkEnergy podcast, the rise in green construction is projected to reach $460 billion globally by 2022. It's a clear sign that more of us are embracing cleaner living and a desire to tackle climate change, and carbon emissions from the comfort of our home. Did you know that 111 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions are released into the atmosphere every year from Canadian homes and buildings. In fact, approximately 60% of Canada's energy usage is from heating and cooling our buildings. When it comes to home design and construction, passive homes and other low impact builds are changing the building landscape thanks to informed and environmentally conscious consumers. At a high level, a passive home works with its environment, reducing the need for additional energy for heating and cooling. Some factors include how a home is positioned or oriented on the parcel of land, how it makes use of sunlight as an energy source, its air tightness and overall indoor air quality. Net-zero and passive homes don't look any different from other recently built homes - even on the inside, most of what makes the home efficient is happening behind the walls, in the foundation or on the roof. Perhaps the surest way to tell a passive home from a regular home would be to look at its utility bill. Certified passive homes are 80-90% more energy efficient than a typical home built to code. And as demand rises, and costs fall, energy efficient homes are paying for themselves faster than ever before. That being said, awareness and incentives may be the keys to greater adoption. According to the Canadian Home Builders Association, there are only 456 certified netzero buildings in the country. And according to passive house Canada, there are currently only 67, certified residential, commercial and institutional buildings. So here is today's big question. What exactly goes into a passive home? And what can homeowners expect with respect to their carbon footprint and future energy bills? To talk about these high performance homes, we've invited Casey Gray, the founder of an award winning sustainable building company, The Conscious Builder, and the host of the Conscious Builder podcast. Okay, let's get started. Casey, thanks for joining us today. Perhaps you can tell us a bit about yourself, your background and what's led you to sustainable building?   Casey Gray  04:05 Yeah, I guess I have to go back a little bit. My background, I guess if you want to call it back to when I skipped born raised in Ottawa, so I've been in Ottawa my whole life, in the east end of Ottawa at the beginning and then moved to the west end and south and all over the place since I've been in construction, essentially, and married and very happily been with my wife going on 16 we're trying to figure this out the other day, like married seven years later, 16 years, I think at this point. We have a seven year old, who's doing great, so very happy with that. We're navigating the school system like everybody else who has kids. Luckily, we have one to deal with. So I'm sure with multiple kids, it's a lot more difficult. So I'm not complaining by any means, that's for sure. So that's all great. But the reason why I mentioned that is actually because my family is kind of what led me into the symbol building portion. So I've been in construction since after high school went and did my apprenticeship became a carpenter and started running jobs. My guy's 21 when I ran my first job, actually, I think I was younger than that. But in either case I went on my own in my early 20s, and kind of have been growing since then. But when I went on my own, I wasn't, I was just like every other, you know, 20 year old just wanted to go out, be my own boss and make more money. That's essentially what I was looking to do. Right. That's it. That's what everybody wants to do when they're when they're young. But it wasn't until that my wife and I - actually we did a Tony Robbins event that was kind of the kickoff. So we did this Tony Robbins event called 'unleash the power within'. And it kind of changed everything for us because it changed the way that we think. And if you change the way you think of changing your life, and we came back from that experience asking ourselves a lot of questions, and why, you know, why do we do this? Why do we eat that will, you know, what's the purpose of, you know, the business, what's our life purpose, all those types of things, right. And we're kind of on cloud nine for a while. But then, not too long after that, actually, at another Tony Robbins event, we found out that we were going to have our first child, which we didn't know is his son at the time, first and only. And that really sunk in for me, because then all of a sudden, for myself, I realized that if I was going to tell this little human being who's going to be looking up to me that he or she, who didn't know at the time could be whatever whoever they want to be, I have to lead by example. So that's when things really clicked for me. And I changed the direction of the business because I started asking, you know, why -What can we do in the construction industry? I like construction, I really enjoy it. I don't want to change that career. But how can we make sure that we leave this place better? right? How can I How can I do my part to make sure that the the earth is a better place when I leave it for my child and grandchildren, hopefully, to come years down the road, everybody else for that matter, but it didn't really sink in right till, till all of a sudden you have somebody else looking up to you that you know will be looking up to you. And in doing what you do not what you say.   Dan Seguin  06:54 you know, I really liked the name of your company. How did you land on the conscious builder? And how does your name and what you stand for influence you and your work?   Casey Gray  07:08 Yeah, so the word 'conscious' really started to stick with my wife and I because consciousness is really a state of awareness. And you can't, you really can't change anything until you're aware of it, you can't. Without that first step awareness is the number one thing. So that's something that really stuck. And we ended up doing a podcast called the conscious living podcast, which we did 70 some odd episodes with people all over the world, not in construction, but in other things in my life ended up running with that for a little while, which led into other things, obviously. But then we kind of started building these brands off of the word conscious. And that's where I started thinking about the construction part. And that's where the conscious builder came from. Because the way we see our role is really, as an educator, it's about making conscious decisions, but you need to be aware of what those implications are before you can make those decisions. And we see ourselves as being one of the most important people when people want to build a house or do a renovation, we are the ones who need to give them the information that they need in order to make a conscious decision. Does that mean that everything we do is 100% sustainable? Or, you know, have a net zero carbon effect on the world? No, because there's a lot of other factors at play as well. And everybody's different, right? We're not here to judge, we're here to just give the information. And it's up to the homeowners that we work with to make the final decision for whatever works for them and their families and their priorities.   Dan Seguin  08:35 Now, Casey, when you started out in this sector, what would you say were the disrupters in your field? What were the challenges you encountered in the beginning? And have you seen a societal or industry shift since?   Casey Gray  08:53 Well, I'm kind of like we, I always tell people, we kind of build for the 1% of the 1%. You know, building a custom home for people to begin with is not a cheap endeavor. It doesn't matter if you build it sustainably or not. But you have to have the finances to be able to build a custom home, but then you actually have to care about the environment to want to go a step further, or care about your health, whatever it may be, or be aware of it. Right? because not a lot of people care about that stuff. But they're not aware of what the decisions are making and how those things, how those decisions are affecting themselves and others around them. So I guess, you know, at first, we weren't a disrupter until we started to make the shift. And then we kind of just went all in and we jumped right into our Passive House. And I wouldn't say we were a disrupter, we weren't the first one doing it. But we were kind of setting the bar more for ourselves and for anybody else to prove that what is possible, right. Here's what's possible. Here's what we believe, this is why we're doing it. Once again, we're not forcing anybody to do it. It's not like we're building hundreds and hundreds of homes every year. You know, maybe we'll get to a point where we can build some spec homes that are more in line with our values. And create some interest with that. But that's not where we're at at this point. So we really just continue to see ourselves as that company that can educate people, but beyond even our clients, other businesses as well and other people in the industry,   Dan Seguin  10:14 okay, it's safe to say that green homes have come a long way, in the last decade, and building a green home is quickly shifting from an alternative way of building to more mainstream, there are a few building standards and certifications out there to choose from, perhaps you can start us off by helping us to understand the most popular types of green builds and certifications your company does, and how they differentiate.   Casey Gray  10:47 Yeah, so I guess at the end of the day, like we can build anything, we're certified to do all the certifications that I'll mention, there is I think I'd like to go back a little bit and I guess, give a little bit of understanding, because, you know, obviously the word green can be thrown around quite a bit, we like to use it ultimately, what we aim for is like a sustainable, a comfortable and an efficient home. A healthy home. And if you build like a healthy, comfortable home, by default, it will be efficient, it will be sustainable. And in Ontario, where we are the one that most people know about is ENERGY STAR. Now, what a lot of people don't know about energy star is that obviously the building code changes and ENERGY STAR has to change as well. So if you're living in an ENERGY STAR home that was built 10-15 years ago, it's actually worse than the building code now. So it is because it has to change. Same with R2000. R2000 changed about five, six years ago, I believe that is supposed to be 50% better than minimum building code. So there's minimum building code, which is pretty good now. Energy Star is 20% better, R2000 should be around 50%. Better. There's LEED certification, which isn't big in residential, it's more in commercial, but then there's different levels of LEED certification. So that usually ranges from 40 to 70-80% better depending on where you're going, but LEED really focuses on certain products and the carbon footprint not necessarily just on efficiency. And then you get into, there's also net-zero, which is CHBA's new standard, which I think is great. So it's technically about 30% better than minimum building code. But if you put solar panels on, you can offset all of your electricity bills, or all of your energy bills. One caveat I'll say is that technically there is a calculation that can offset your natural gas bill. However, you cannot produce natural gas. So I tell people, if you're going to put solar panels on, you might as well go fossil fuel free, because you will never put fossil fuels back into the ground. But that's maybe another conversation. And then but in theory, you end up being you know, and that's creating, or producing as much electricity as you use. And then there's the extreme, like Passive House, which has passive house International, and passive house US, which is about 80% better, you know, these are all kind of just random numbers. Not so random. But there, it depends on the design, obviously, right. But though 80% better than code, that in my opinion would be to go true. Like off grid, you kind of need to go passivhaus standard in our climate because you need to design for the worst day or week of the year. And even get into things like the Living Building Challenge, or you can't use like any plastics in your house and all sorts of craziness. But there's no shortage of things that you can go after. But a lot of those aren't mainstream, the mainstream ones are really energy star. And even R2000 has been around for years, a lot of people haven't heard of that. So I think ENERGY STAR and then net zero is picking up quite a bit of traction.   Dan Seguin  13:54 So I hear you have a passive home. Maybe you can tell us a bit about some of the features of your home that make it a certified passive home and its impact on your life.   Casey Gray  14:08 Yeah, so we do not own it anymore. We sold it a couple years ago. So we've built it, lived in it for four years, sold it. And it did have a pretty big impact obviously on our business too. As far as I'm aware, we're the only builder who has actually built sort of multiple certified passive homes within the area, because we've helped a couple architects do certified homes for themselves as well. Now speaking about the house that we built for ourselves - really what it comes down to when it comes to building a passive home. The big focus on passive is the energy consumption, the heating, cooling demand and the air tightness. So a big part of a comfortable healthy home is how airtight you can make it. Ideally you want to make it as airtight as you possibly can, and then control the ventilation through mechanical ventilation. A lot of people think that they need their home to breathe. Yes, you do need your home to breathe, but you want your home to breathe like your lungs breathe, right you want to breathe in and out through your lungs, you don't want to breathe through your skin. So you don't want to dig holes through your, through your walls. You want to seal those all up. And then you want to precondition the air that's coming into your house and filter it just like what your nose would do. So that's kind of the best analogy that I give. And also if you don't believe in air tightness, you know, on a day like today, which is nice and cold, you're in Ottawa, put on a jacket, go outside and unzip it and stand towards the wind, and you tell me if air tightness works or not. That's another analogy I like to use. We need air tightness, right, and you could have a really thin jacket that would be warm, if it's airtight, and a really thick jacket that's not airtight and be cold, right. So those are all things that are important. That's what passive house really focuses on there is high insulation levels, but it's a big focus on air tightness as well. So really the difference from a passive house, your regular house, or you know, code, let's call it code home, is there's more thought put into the envelope, which really comes down to the insulation, the air tightness, the windows and doors. And then by default, you also have to put some thought into your heating and cooling system because it drastically reduces everything, as well as your ventilation system, because it becomes extremely important. So everything else could be the same. From the outside, you never know if a house was passive, where you would not pick it up because you notice the walls are really thick, which you might not even notice from the outside, it depends on where they put the windows in the assembly. But other than that, you wouldn't notice it. But the real experience is when you live in it, when you live in a passive home, you realize how comfortable it is, you realize how quiet it is, you realize how fresh the air is in it all the time, we went to Florida for an extended period of time when we lived there. And when we came back, like the house is vacant, it's been vacant for a while. And it just felt like fresh wood and walked into the house, like leave a house vacant for for a couple months and come back to it and tell me how fresh It smells this house smell fresh, you have to experience it, you can't really like put it on a brochure and sell it to people, you just have to experience it. And those are the things that you get from a passive home. If you live in a passive home that's in the city, beside a busy street, you will experience how nice it is to live in a passive home because you won't hear anything outside. Those are the things that become really important and you realize it's kind of one of those things, you don't miss it until you've experienced it and then don't have it anymore.   Dan Seguin  17:33 I think the general understanding Casey is that by choosing to go with a green building standard, there are higher upfront costs. What are the typical upfront costs? And what is considered a reasonable payback period for those investments?   Casey Gray  17:50 That's difficult to answer, I wouldn't be able to give you any exact numbers. Part of the reason I can't is because we've never built the same house twice. So the only real way to figure out what a payback period is, is if you take one home, and you build it to a minimum building code, and then you take the same exact design and you modify it to hit this next building code, right and nobody's done that, to my knowledge, right? So a lot of people say it costs you 20% more to passive house or 10% or whatever it may be. But 10% more than what? What is that baseline? And I think what people don't realize because I've had this come up a lot in passive house is that you can build like I can build you a 2500 square foot home with vinyl siding carpet, like you know shingle roof meant you know not you know PVC windows, an IKEA kitchen like all these lower end features, or I can build you the same size home with with a copper roof and a stone exterior and reclaimed wood hardwood floors. You know $150,000 Custom kitchen, same square footage, completely different makeup, let's say on the outside, different baseline to start with. So to take the more expensive model and go to passive it's going to be a very small percent to take the other the cheaper option and go to passive it's going to be a much higher percent. Because where you end up spending money when it comes to building, whether it's passive or just a more energy efficient home, it's going to be around the envelope, you'll spend more on your insulation and air sealing. And you'll spend more on potentially your HVAC system if you go fossil fuel free, right but in theory, you can actually save money on your h HVAC system, because you will need a smaller system. But when we build homes, a lot of them are thought of and 10 years of business. We've only built two homes with natural gas all the rest of them fossil fuel free and just because the technology is more expensive, it just costs a little bit more. So the energy consumption or the cost to run those things would be the same. So I don't think it really comes down to you know what's the payback? Yes, you will save energy costs. If you're comparing apples to apples. I don't know how long it's going to take. But I think that I'm hoping, I'd say I believe that there will be value in the future, right? There's not a lot of value with any of these sorts of certifications on the marketplace right now, especially with the way the market is going now. But soon enough, just like gas mileage, I think it would be important for people to realize the importance of the ERS rating on their home and how that affects them and their comfort, and so forth.   Dan Seguin  20:34 From everything I've read, the Ottawa housing market is booming, despite the pandemic, what have you noticed most during this time?   Casey Gray  20:46 We've noticed that there's a lot of we have a lot of leads, like we have no shortage of people reaching out to us for work, but people can't find lots people are looking to build but they can't find a lot, right, there's no lot to build or there's they can't you know, they find a house, they lose the house to somebody else who wanted to pay more for it. So that's what we're seeing. Right. That's the toughest part. Obviously, we're seeing that there's an increase in price, right? Typically, when demand goes up, prices go up. So that's affecting material substrate, and so forth. So it makes it harder to estimate projects. Everything that we do is open book and cost plus we have our fees. So if things go up, we just need to communicate that to our clients. For the most part, they're aware of the situation that we're in, right, there's a lot of delays, people are just busy. And what we're trying to find guys we don't have it's of anybody's listening to this and want to join our team, definitely submit an application at the conscious builder. But we're looking for carpenters and helpers, because we can't keep up with the work that is coming our way, but also with the work that we already have. Because some of the delays now things are starting to pile up.   Dan Seguin  21:48 Now, Casey, I'm going to read your company's mission statement from your website, because I really like it. It says that your mission is: to make sure that everybody in the world has a healthy, comfortable and efficient home to live in. What do you think is needed to achieve that? Is it financial incentives? Is it government policy to support homeowners and the industry?   Casey Gray  22:15 Well, I think it's, I believe we all need to take responsibility for our own homes, right, we need to at least the ones, the ones of us who have that ability to do that, right, we need to lead by example. It's not to say like our mission statement doesn't mean that we're going to build homes for everybody, it means that we're going to do our best to provide the information for people to do that for themselves, or to hire somebody to do it or to ask the right questions to the builder, whoever they're working with, right? We're like, we're not gonna be able to build for everybody, there's only so many houses, so many projects that we can do in a year. But if we can help somebody else in another city or province, ask the right questions and find the right builder for somebody who's doing that, or we can help that builder become better and educate them. And that that's what it's going to take I think, you know, it's interesting when with regards to incentives, or you know, those obviously help, but I think that they are they help for the wrong reasons. Right. So the question is, how do we get people to want to care about this, right to to actually want to improve the health of their home, the comfort of their home, without being financially incentivized they want to do it because they know it's better for themselves and know it's better for their, for their kids? Or they know it's better for the environment, because you're using a lot less electricity. That's the tricky part. And I don't know if I have the answer to that, I'm just doing my part to say, we need to do this. Like it's obvious. You can look at things happening in the world, we have to act, I will say that there's no lag that's too little, like every little step helps, right? Even if you just can't improve the performance of your home, like we're, we're living in a home right now, there's natural gas in the home that we're living in right now. We didn't build it, it's it wasn't by our choice, but we do other things that we can that are within our power to offset our carbon footprint, for example, those are all those are all things that we can do, right, you stop using plastic bags and use, you know, cloth bags, or whatever it may be, is a really simple one right? To start using the compost more often, right? If you're turning down the thermostat a little bit or just doing things in the right order to write don't people like to jump into low hanging fruit? There is a proper or order of tackling your renovations in your home if you are going that route as well. So these are all things that you know, fall in, you know, a lot of information there. But I think ultimately we just need to take responsibility and lead by example. And that goes for governments too right? They have a lot of homes that they can upgrade that are funded that they actually make a much better financial case for someone like the government or any sort of Community Housing that holds multiple properties that pays the bills that need something that's going to last a long time. They can really make a financial case for building something like Passive House there, it makes a lot of sense. It's harder to do the one off projects.   Dan Seguin  25:25 Moment of truth. Casey, are there any myths you would like to dispel around buildings, or renovating green?   Casey Gray  25:35 Yeah, the myth I think I already alluded to was that your house needs to breathe. Right? A lot of people think that they need their house to breathe, and you don't want it to be too airtight. Like I said, you do want your walls to be as airtight as possible, but you want them to be permeable, meaning like you want vapor to be able to travel through them if need be, but not air. And that is I'll go back to the analogy I already said is that just like your body, you need to breathe as a human, you breathe through your lungs, you don't breathe through your skin, you sweat through your skin, right? So moisture needs to get out of your body, it will come through your skin. But if oxygen or air needs to come out here, it's going to go through your lungs and out your nose, your mouth, it's the same sort of thing. So think of your nose mouth as the ventilation system, your mechanical ventilation system for your home that preconditions right, so that's how you want to ventilate your home. A lot of people get these homes, they have this box hanging in the basement, it's called it's an HRV. I hope that people are starting to put ERV's in because those are actually what we need in our climate. People will argue with me on that. But people in the high performance building community understand this. But a lot of homeowners get it, they don't understand it because they weren't explained how, what it does or how it works. And they just unplug and they never run it, we need to run those like you want that fresh air system to be running 24 seven, and you want to seal up all the other holes. So make your house as airtight as possible, mechanically ventilate it. And that will help your indoor air quality.   Dan Seguin  27:07 Now, my friend, it's time to dust off your crystal ball. What are some of the emerging technologies and innovations that excite you about your industry?   Casey Gray  27:17 So in our industry, I think we're lagging a little bit like there's obviously a lot of technology when it comes to solar panels. And there's even some solar panels that are coming out that can generate electricity at night with the like condensation that forms on the back of them. I think that there's a lot of promise for 3D printing. That's where I believe that there's going to be a huge impact. I think building homes in a more controlled environment like in a factory makes a lot of sense. However, you are limited by the radius around that factory to do it. That's where I think 3d printing can come into play. If you could have technologies doing some amazing things. But if there's a machine that could show up on site and literally print a house, and then move over to the next step and print like they're doing it like in China, like there's a it's not printing everything, right, but they're printing the structure, right? They printed like 10 houses in a day. There's these tiny little cabins, it comes out like soft ice cream, it's like a cement mixture of some sort. There's also a company, I think it's the University of Southern California startup company. They're doing a lot of really cool testing, they've been doing it for 15 years at this point where they would have this machine show up and printed and really would be is designed for areas where there might be mass to start like an earthquake or hurricane or something comes through and just destroys all the buildings in the area. These machines could show up and print out the shacks really quickly where people would at least be protected from the elements. I think that's where the technology is going. It's going to be hopefully automating things now when it comes to renovations, it's going to be harder, like I think we're still going to need manpower for a long time. But there's even robots coming out there that can navigate rough terrain, right. There's a robot always navigating rough terrain and laying bricks. Right. So I think there's just so much I think construction is one of those industries that hasn't been disrupted yet, when it comes to technology. We are still slapping two by fours and two by sixes together in the same way we did it 150 years ago, at least where we live here in Ottawa, and there's a lot of room for improvement. So I don't know what's going to come first. But I think 3D printing is going to have a huge impact on our industry.   Dan Seguin  29:32 Well, Casey, for folks that want to make their existing homes more energy efficient and help contribute to a low carbon future. Where should they start? And what should they know if they want to pursue some of the standards or certifications you mentioned earlier in the podcast.   Casey Gray  29:53 But you should start by checking out the Conscious Builder. We got a lot of stuff on our YouTube channel. There's probably if you have any questions You can probably find it there. And if you can't send them our way, and we'll answer them for you. But ultimately, you need to, I always tell people, you got to build your team, you have to do what's called an integrated design process. So if you have an existing home that you want to improve the comfort, the performance and efficiency, whatever it is your purpose, there is a certain way that you need to do that you can't just tackle the low hanging fruit number one, you're going to need an energy advisor, you need your baseline, right, so the energy advisor needs to come in, they need to take a basically set a line of here's what how your house performs now. And then in that report, they will say if you upgrade your windows, if you upgrade your insulation, if you upgrade the insulation in your basement or attic, irritate nice, this is how much more it's going to improve the performance. There's all these things that it gives you. But you can't just go for example, and look at Oh, I'm going to save 20% if I upgrade my furnace, I might as well start with that what will happen is that if you do your furnace, first in your air conditioning, and then you upgrade your windows, and then you make your house more airtight. And then you add more insulation to your walls, you enter your attic, you now end up having a furnace that's oversized, and it's short cycles. So you want to first first focus on your envelopes, do everything you possibly can with your envelope first, that will reduce the heating and cooling demand. And then before you actually put your new heating and cooling system in, get the energy advisor back to test again, so that you can get a properly sized system. Most people's homes have systems that are too large. And that's one of the reasons they end up with cold rooms and hot rooms because they're balanced. But the issue is, is not running long enough to get the air to the far parts of the house, for example, or the air tightness wasn't done properly. So just you need a good team that can work well together, that's gonna be your energy advisor. It'll be your designer, and it'll be your contractor. They need to understand the importance of all these things. And then you need to make the hard decisions of what you're going to do first, because most people, I've yet to have a client who says, here's the work we want to do, and here's the money we have, and then they have leftover money. It's usually the work we want to do. And here's the money we have. And I say okay, well what's most important to you because we can't fit it all in hate. So let's fit as much as we possibly can in what the goal is.   Dan Seguin  32:20 Are you ready to close this off with some rapid fire questions?   Casey Gray  32:25 Okay, that means I gotta keep my answer short, right?   Dan Seguin  32:29 What is your favorite word?   Casey Gray  32:32 My favorite word? I have to go with 'Conscious'. I've never been asked that question before, but the unconscious is a good one.   Dan Seguin  32:39 What is the one thing you can't live without?   Casey Gray  32:45 My family.   Dan Seguin  32:46 Okay, this one's interesting. What habit or hobby have you picked up Casey during shelter in place?   Casey Gray  32:54 I have gotten into cryptocurrency. So educating myself on that, and that technology and how that's changing the financial world, actually. So. Yeah, so I've been educating myself on that.   Dan Seguin  33:08 If you could have one, just one superpower, what would it be?   Casey Gray  33:13 That's a good one. I think I just want to fly just because that'd be fun.   Dan Seguin  33:16 Okay, Casey, if you could turn back time and talk to your 18 year old self? What would you tell him?   Casey Gray  33:23 I don't think I'd tell him anything. This is something I have thought about before. And the reason I say that is because if I were to tell him something, I wouldn't be where I am today. And I wouldn't have made the mistakes that I had to make growing up. So I think I would, I don't think I would say anything, I would just leave them and let them figure out stuff as he's supposed to.   Dan Seguin  33:40 And lastly, my friend, what do you currently find most interesting about your sector?   Casey Gray  33:47 What's most interesting is still what was interesting before is that there is room for growth. There is a lot of opportunity to improve homes, both new homes and renovations and there's never one at least in what we do there. No, there's never one the same. So every project is different, everyone has a new problem to solve new challenges that we need to accept and overcome. So I think that that's what keeps me going is I like that variety. And I like being able to take on those new challenges ultimately.   Dan Seguin  34:21 Casey, we've reached the end of another episode of the thick energy podcast. Thank you. Thank you very much for joining us today. I hope you had a lot of fun. Cheers.   Casey Gray  34:32 Yeah. Thanks so much for having me. This has been a lot of fun. Those are some good rapid fire questions.   Dan Seguin  34:38 Thank you for joining us today. I truly hope you enjoyed this episode of The ThinkEnergy podcast. For past episodes, make sure you visit our website hydroottawa.com/podcast. Lastly, if you found value in this podcast, be sure to subscribe. Anyway, this podcast is a wrap. Cheers, everyone.

What will it take for municipalities, businesses and homeowners to get on board with energy efficiency and why is this step so important? In part two of our discussion with Corey Diamond, Executive Director of Efficiency Canada, we zoom in to look at energy efficiency from a local level. We discuss the common barriers for implementing energy efficiency as well as what’s needed from city leaders and utilities to help the communities embrace it. Related Content & Links:  Efficiency Canada Twitter: @EfficiencyCAN Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/efficiency-canada/ Website: https://www.efficiencycanada.org/ Resources 16 ways Canada’s enhanced climate plan advances energy efficiency Our Human Energy --- Transcript: Dan Seguin  00:02 Hey everyone, welcome back to this special episode of The ThinkEnergy podcast. I'm thrilled you could join me for part two of our discussion about energy efficiency with Corey Diamond, the executive director of Efficiency Canada. In our last episode, part one, we talked about the importance of energy efficiency on a country's economy and its global impact on the environment. So on today's episode, we're going to bring energy efficiency down to brass tacks. We're going to sharpen our focus on the involvement and local impact for a community and for business and homeowners. So what does that look like? It's EV infrastructure, the construction of new buildings to be more energy efficient, it's retrofitting existing buildings, improving the efficiency of appliances, and electrical equipment - all of which put us on the right path to reducing our greenhouse gas emissions and helping us live within our environmental means. As an electric utility company, Hydro Ottawa recognizes that our industry and service model is in the midst of a significant transformation, taking on a more decentralized, customer centric, technologically advanced and climate focus form. With that will come increases in clean energy generation, more electrification of transportation, and building heating, energy storage, smart grid control, and greater user control. And at the core of all of this is energy efficiency. What's fascinating from my talk with Corey Diamond is how much power is actually in our own hands when it comes to using energy more wisely. These actions have a positive impact on the environment, on our finances, in the long run, and even on our property values and in job creation. But is energy efficiency accessible? Can everyone and anyone participate? Similar to the last episode? Here is today's big question: What are the benefits of energy efficiency? And why is it important to municipalities, businesses and homeowners to get on board? How can cost as a barrier be addressed? Once again, please welcome Corey Diamond. Corey, thank you so much for joining me today.   Corey Diamond  03:19 Great to be here again, Thanks, Dan.   Dan Seguin  03:20 I've read that in some cases, energy efficiency investments can be as profitable or even more profitable than renewable energy investments, because they provide a higher and faster return on investment. Is energy efficiency the first step that municipalities, industry, businesses and homeowners should consider to take control of their energy uses, and helping the environment?   Corey Diamond  03:47 Yeah, that's a really good question. In fact, you know, traditionally, in this sector, they, you know, they used to call energy efficiency, quote-unquote, the "first fuel", so it was kind of like, what's the first thing we should be doing and let's, let's look at getting rid of our energy waste first. And you do see a lot of that now, as kind of the first entry point. And, you know, but actually, what's happening in the sector is very interesting, because the cost of renewables is coming down so much, that you're starting to kind of see a melding, you know, it's essentially an erosion of the traditional barriers of, you know, traditional energy efficiency versus renewable or other carbon reduction strategies like, you know, smart homes or smart technology or shaving peak and things like that. So these kinds of barriers between what's storage versus efficiency versus renewables are really starting to kind of be removed, which is really interesting. It's also interesting because the people who are doing the work can do it all, right. And so you don't have to call an efficiency expert or like an HVAC technician, and then calling a renewal person, a lot of that's kind of changing and these businesses are figuring out how to provide kind of a one stop on all of it. Guess I would say the most important thing is, you know, from a building's perspective that, that you look at the building or your home as a system, and you start to think of it not just by individual measures based on what, you know, grants or incentives may be available, but you're actually looking at as a system and what makes sense as a system to do. And so, you know, it may not make sense to put in such a large mechanical system, if you've tackled things like, you know, the insulation, or the windows and things like that, you know, as far as how it fits in with other things, our friends at the atmospheric fund in Toronto, they did significant deep retrofits of large apartment buildings. And they found actually, the one thing that brought down the ROI so much that enabled the investment in some of the larger mechanical systems or the more kind of the deeper retrofits was water, was replacing toilets, and that they actually went in and save, because these old toilets were leaking so much, they save so much money on toilets, they were able to install, you know, the top of the line technology to heat the building in a low carbon way. So it's interesting, you know, they didn't go in it just trying to find money or try to kind of force in a solution, they kind of looked at it holistically. And because of that, they were able to find the savings to cover the costs and some of the larger ticket items.   Dan Seguin  06:22 Based on the research Efficiency Canada has done across the country. And in other parts of the world. What would you say are some of the grassroot initiatives or community initiatives that have helped advance energy efficiency and municipal climate action plans?   Corey Diamond  06:40 Well, I can tell you a little bit about our model, you know, we set out from the beginning, not only to kind of be a traditional kind of policy shop, and you know, making sure we're advancing the right solutions or analyzing the right policies. But we also want it to be a bit of a grassroots organization that spent time organizing and mobilizing the sector. And in part one I talked about, you know, the fact that there are over 436,000 people in Canada do this work. Well, up until very recently, most elected officials didn't know that and didn't know or couldn't identify constituents, someone in their constituency that was doing this work. So we do a lot of that kind of activity where we connect people to their local elected officials and coordinate meetings, we've done over 50 calls with MPs and local constituents. And it matters a lot. And it matters because, you know, I can spew off all the stats I want on this podcast, or in a meeting and things people don't remember that stuff. But they remember stories, and, you know,you're a podcast host, you get it. And, you know, they remember stories. And so we really try to coach people on how to tell their story. And you know, making sure that those stories stick and that's starting to work. And we're starting to kind of build out a broad based political constituency. When we started, we had zero people in our database, we have over 10,000 now, you know, that we can turn on and say, you know, what, we need you, we need you, if you want to see these types of policies, here's a very simple way for you to get in touch with your elected official and make that happen. But we're not the only ones doing that, you know, I have heard anecdotally that the the youth climate groups are doing amazing work and mobilizing at the local level, the town of Whitby, just just east of where I am in Toronto, you know, just passed a green development standard, and that the youth climate folks were right in there, you know, engaged in the process, pushing for this. And it's really great to see, you know, see the passion that is coming from, from younger folks who get this stuff and pushing our elected officials to make it happen. So that gives us some inspiration as well.   Dan Seguin  08:48 As I'm sure you're aware, the City of Ottawa has a plan to achieve net zero emissions by 2050. With an initiative called Energy Evolution, energy efficiency for both commercial and residential buildings is one of the key strategies to achieving this goal. Looking at our local context, how can we tackle energy efficiency in the fastest, most cost effective way?   Corey Diamond  09:13 So I looked up the plan and and you know, is minded to you know, what the impact is of the built environment in Ottawa, very similar to other cities, but 37% of greenhouse gas emissions reductions in Ottawa are going to come from buildings. So that's a heavy lift. So what do we need to do you know, if you look at the the strategic approach that the City of Ottawa is laid out, you know, it's in line with what a lot of the major municipalities across the country are doing certainly Vancouver, with its six bold moves in Toronto got transformed TO, Halifax has a great new climate plan. And they're looking at, you know, a number of things and Ottawa is no different. You got to think about electrifying personal and commercial vehicles, we got to retrofit all of our residential and commercial buildings. And then interestingly, for Ottawa was around turning organic waste into renewable natural gas, which is, again, technology that is available today. So these are some things that the City of Ottawa can immediately move on, and start to kind of advance through its own ways to compliment what the province and the federal government is doing. But specifically, what can the City of Ottawa do and we've looked at different models around the country that have different ways of doing things. And, you know, I often think of energy efficiency, it does suffer a little bit from not treating it, the way we treat other aspects of our life, you know, this kind of Amazon, Netflix, kind of Uber, UberEats kind of world we're in of convenience. It's hard to renovate your house, it's hard to find out what to do, it's hard to find out, you know, the right suppliers and the right priorities and things, what we need is a concierge to kind of help us do that. And there's some great, you know, examples of that, and cities around the world have, you know, basically somebody, through an app or through phone calls, just helping you figure all that out. So that's something great the City of Ottawa could do. The second thing it can do is provide financing, you know, a number of cities around the country are instituting what's called PACE financing, allowing people to essentially put the capital cost on their, onto their property bill, paying it back through their property taxes every year. So that's a really interesting thing that is enabled in Ontario and Ottawa could, I know is thinking about it, and could move fast on that. And then, like I said, about Whitby, you know, there are opportunities for the City of Ottawa to be more aggressive on codes and standards, new buildings around supporting, you know, renovations of buildings and things like that we need to move fast. And, and Ottawa wouldn't be the only mover on this, like I said, there's municipal leaders across this country who are taking this seriously and driving it alongside the people in Ottawa.   Dan Seguin  12:10 What are your thoughts on the fact that every decarbonisation strategy assigns a major role to energy efficiency, and also places an even greater emphasis on electrifying buildings and vehicles?   Corey Diamond  12:24 Well, while it's no surprise to me, yeah, I've been doing this 18 years. So you know, finally people are getting it. But you know, it's kind of one of those things where I think energy efficiency, and these kinds of things are starting to complement or essentially are becoming the engine, for lack of a better, you know, metaphor behind this great policy, ambition, you know, the world is moving towards a net zero emissions economy. This is going to be a part of us getting there and, you know, efficiency is estimated to contribute about 44 megatons of Canada's climate commitments that's gonna overwhelmingly come in cities and provinces and federal policies where you're gonna, you know, you can turn those levers. And the way I think about efficiency, too, is I may have mentioned this in the last episode, part one, but, you know, energy efficiency makes every other carbon reduction strategy easier and better. One example, just just just south of us in New York State, they have a renewable portfolio standard, where they're saying, you know, successive, you know, sets of years, we're going to continue to ratchet up the amount of renewables that are providing energy to to people in New York, well, it's much easier to do all of that if you're getting rid of the energy waste first. So you don't have to build as much infrastructure through panels and windmills and storage if you're using just less first. So there's a really nice tie in and a really strategic approach to be as aggressive as possible on efficiency to not only help out, you know, obviously customers, but to help out on this renewable portfolio standard, and they kind of work together. So we're seeing a lot more of that. And that's probably why you're seeing efficiency central to decarbonisation strategies is one of the safest bets out there.   Dan Seguin  14:25 Corey, your team at Efficiency Canada has done a lot of work to quantify the social, economic, and environmental benefits of energy efficiency. Can you talk about those benefits in a local context like Ottawa, for instance?   Corey Diamond  14:42 I can speak more stats, but I'm not going to because I like to tell stories and I want you know, we tell a lot of stories. And so, you know, if you think about it in the context of Ottawa,  we look at people like Andy Coburn - Andy works as the director Education and Training at the North American insulation Manufacturers Association. He's also president of the Home Builders Association and Lanark and Leeds and Andy's you know, Andy's is Andy, he's a Red Seal, General carpenter, he's a certified Passive House consultant. He comes from this great background of understanding kind of, you know, the built environment with a passion for like construction. And, you know, he was in commercial radio, he's done marketing and trades, and, you know, he's teaching and he's worked with a lot of nonprofits. So he's kind of a really interesting guy, and you meet someone like Andy, and he kind of, you know, you bask in his passion and kind of his glow for this type of work. And there's so many of those people around the country we call it our human energy. That's the title for our campaign around that. And, and he's a perfect example of that, and I bet you there's dozens more people like Andy in the Ottawa area that are doing this every day, you know, 8-10-12 hours a day driving this and then volunteering at night to try and push another agenda. And so that's the benefit, right? That's the local context. And it was just, you know, people like Andy Coburn,   Dan Seguin  16:13 Let's tackle human behavior, from EV adoption, to performing energy upgrades. to people using public transportation. Research has shown that 30% of potential energy savings is lost due to a variety of social, cultural and economic factors. How do we address these barriers, so everyone can participate and help our economy be more energy efficient?   Corey Diamond  16:42 Yeah, it's a really good question. So let's start with the people who have the means first, you know, I was reflecting with my daughter during the Superbowl, we were watching some of the commercials. And there is a real kind of juxtaposition between the types of ads that you're seeing from government related COVID versus let's say, you're seeing from you know, quest trade and quest trade is like kind of an online investment app. And the COVID ads, you know, are typical ads that we would see around, you know, essentially scaring us about the current situation is an extremely scary situation. But almost like using fear as a way to kind of try and get people to behave in a certain way. The Quest trade ads were all about what your friends are doing, and what your neighbors are doing, and what reviews you're reading online. And it was really interesting, the language they were using around not, you should go into this app and save money, but all my friends are doing it. And that is why you should do it too. And so people get information from their peers, they get information from their friends, they get information from social norms, these are the kinds of things that affect our behavior. And the more that we can tap into that element of our brain, the more that we can see, you know, these kinds of energy behaviors and upgrades and things happen because they become social norms. So that's interesting. And that's kind of what gets us to tipping points. So that's for  the part of the population that, middle upper middle class, and kind of, you know, who have had the meets. And that's I think, where you tap in, but a large part of the population, it's difficult to participate in climate mitigation, you know, people in this world, find it very difficult just to get by, and now you're asking them to carry a greater burden. And so there are lots of different ways to make that happen. There's some great examples across the country of organizations that are supporting those that have less means to participate in this transition. And they do it by you know, common sense - how do you tap into people's cultural and social norms?  How do you find ambassadors that can speak the language? How do you make sure that things are done in a turnkey way, for those that don't have the means to invest capital upfront? And this is why as I mentioned, in part one around, you know, we desperately need to ramp up investment in programming for low to moderate income Canadians who are spending a lot of their income on their energy bills, and how do we make that happen? So different kinds of strategies to work with local community organizations, and different,  service providers who may not be in our traditional energy sector, but have those kinds of relationships and the trust of the people in those communities. And that's how you do it. That's how you kind of tap into those communities and make that work and we're really kind of looking forward to ramping that up this year. As part of our advocacy work,   Dan Seguin  20:01 Hydro Ottawa has been providing customers access to conservation expertise while promoting designing and delivering energy efficiency programs since 2005. This focus on energy efficiency has enhanced customer value, while delivering important benefits to the electricity system. What do you think is the most important role local utilities can play moving forward in helping customers take full advantage of energy efficiency?   Corey Diamond  20:31 Yeah, it's a good question. And you know, utilities across the country have something going for them. And that's authority - you're coming from a place of authority. And so the information you provide is, is meaningful to people and, and it's stable, it's a stable institution in this country, and people get information, and they can definitely trust it. So I would spend as much time as possible, you know, maximizing that level of trust. You know, the other thing is, energy efficiencies come a long way, and how we communicate it. And it used to always just be that Oh, save energy, save money, and then kind of realized, you know, what, people waste money all the time people buy $5 coffees, you know, when they could make it at home, like, people buy sports cars that are 10 times the cost of what it takes to get around. And, you know, money isn't necessarily the motivator, saving money isn't the motivator we thought it was. But, you know, Hydro Ottawa should be, you may already be doing this, you know, talking about efficiency is a comfort issue, talking about it as a convenience issue, talking about it as something that builds communities - these are things that puts people to work in your local community. These are the reasons why people like efficiency. And yeah, let's save a bit of money as well. But it's typically not the primary kind of motivator and these other kinds of things can be exploited or tapped into. And so you can make sure that you're maximizing the programs that you have,   Dan Seguin  22:06 In what ways, has the energy efficiency sector been impacted by the pandemic - positive or negative?   Corey Diamond  22:15 That's a tough question. I mean, there's not a lot of data yet. On this, we've heard some anecdotes that, you know, on the one hand, programs in the commercial and industrial sector have been doing quite well. I mean, you've got empty buildings, you've got a workforce that's, that's moving, you've got, you know, maybe some money lying around that can be invested. So when there's shorter term paybacks, it makes sense. You know, I think small businesses - they've been hit, those types of programs have been hit, because small businesses have been in so many ways, they just cannot put, you know, an ounce of energy or any time towards thinking about this, in the US has been a lot worse. I think in the US, you saw a lot of job losses in this sector, the clean energy sector, and energy efficiency in particular was hit extremely hard. It's starting to bounce back. But they didn't have the same kinds of government support that we had for small businesses through the types of federal programs. So we didn't see as many of the types of layoffs and things that you saw south of the border, but that story's still being written. So I don't have a complete answer yet. But at some point, there'll be some reflection looking back and, and hopefully some lessons that we learn from that to kind of make sure that the sector remains a resilient part of Canada's economy.   Dan Seguin  23:37 Are you ready to close us off with some rapid fire questions?   Corey Diamond  23:42 All right, let's do it.   Dan Seguin  23:44 Okay, here we go. What is your favorite word?   Corey Diamond  23:48 Triskaidekaphobia - It's the fear of Friday the 13th.   Dan Seguin  23:52 What is the one thing you can't live without?   Corey Diamond  23:55 My record collection   Dan Seguin  23:57 Now, what habit or hobby have you picked up during shelter in place?   Corey Diamond  24:05 You know, I don't know if it's a habit or a hobby, but the best thing is, I have lunch every day with my family. And it's amazing. I never used to take lunch. I would eat my desk. And now I eat lunch with my family every day. And it's awesome.   Dan Seguin  24:20 If you could have one superpower, Corey, what would it be?   Corey Diamond  24:25 time travel.   Dan Seguin  24:27 Now, if you could turn back time and talk to your 18 year old self, what would you tell him?   Corey Diamond  24:33 Calm down. I guess I'm telling myself that right now. It's still to this day.   Dan Seguin  24:41 Lastly, what do you currently find most interesting in your sector?   Corey Diamond  24:46 It's got to be the people. I mean, we're all humans on this planet. And you know, the people we interact with every day are the best and it's just a joy to work with the people. I work with. With that Efficiency Canada, our team is amazing. If anybody out there has had any interaction, you probably agree. And but just the external stakeholders, the people in the sector everywhere, just such good well meaning people trying to change the world and it's an honor to work with them.   Dan Seguin  25:19 Okay, well, Corey, we've reached the end of another episode of The ThinkEnergy podcast. I truly hope you had a lot of fun. And thank you for joining me today. Cheers.   Corey Diamond  25:31 I did. Yeah, it was really cool. I hope people enjoyed listening to it. And thank you. You're a great host!   Dan Seguin  25:38 Thank you for joining us today. I truly hope you enjoyed this episode of The ThinkEnergy podcast. For past episodes, make sure you visit our website hydroottawa.com/podcast. Lastly, if you found value in this podcast, be sure to subscribe. Anyway, this podcast is a wrap. Cheers, everyone.

What is at the heart of energy efficiency and what are the benefits? Is less really more? And why is it so important that nations and governments implement policy to take action not only for their economies, but for the planet? To help us demystify this topic, Corey Diamond, Executive Director of Efficiency Canada, and the national voice for an energy efficient economy, joins us to share his insights. The short answer: energy efficiency really means so much more! Tune in to get the scoop. Related Content & Links:  - Efficiency CanadaTwitter: @EfficiencyCANLinkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/efficiency-canada/ Website: https://www.efficiencycanada.org/ - Resources 16 ways Canada’s enhanced climate plan advances energy efficiency Our Human Energy --- Transcript: Dan Seguin  00:02 Hey, everyone, welcome to this very special episode of the ThinkEnergy podcast. Energy efficiency is a large sweeping topic that has different implications and meanings depending on if you are a nation, a federal, provincial or municipal government, an industry, a business owner, or simply a homeowner. On today's show, part one, in our discussion about energy efficiency, we're going to talk about what energy efficiency means on a global scale and on a nationwide scale here in Canada, because that's where the topic of energy efficiency has been elevated to. Back in 2015, the United Nations set out an ambitious 15 year plan to address some of the most pressing issues facing the world by developing 17 Sustainable Development Goals. One of these goals, 'affordable and clean energy' offers solid technical guidelines and solutions so that governments can achieve energy efficiency nationally, and work together to achieve it internationally. So what does that mean for Canada? Where does energy efficiency fit into eliminating energy waste, reducing greenhouse gases and the fight against climate change? We're going to find out. So here's today's big question: What are the benefits of energy efficiency? And why is it so important that nations and governments implement policy to take action not only for their economies, but for the planet? To help demystify this for us, Corey Diamond, Executive Director of Efficiency Canada, the National voice for the energy efficient economy, is here with me today. So Corey, you work with Efficiency Canada, whose advocacy work is focused on making our country a global leader in energy efficiency? Let's start by defining energy efficiency in general, and what are the important things your organization advocates for?   Corey Diamond  03:01 Well, thanks for that, Dan, appreciate the 'back to basics' question. Because, you know, oftentimes, in our world, we just dive right into the erudite world and use as many acronyms and things like that. So why don't we start, you know, at the foundation, and if you think about energy efficiency, I mean, the main thing you're thinking about or talking about is, is using less energy to achieve the same or even better outcomes. And, you know, we want we like to think of it as you know, we want things like, we want to be warm, and we want light, and we want mobility, and we want to be productive, and we want to watch Netflix, without, you know, a breeze coming across our ankles, we want all these things. And it doesn't really make any sense to kind of pay, you know, extra for it or to harness us with, you know, the economic or environmental costs of wasting energy. So if you think about energy efficiency, think of it in the terms of how do we make our lives more comfortable? How do we make them more healthier? How do we make buildings more durable? How do we make our economy more productive? Just by using less? And then you asked about what are the things that we advocate for really, you know, we kind of boil it down to three things. And we think of it as kind of like an end state. So if we woke up at a certain date, and out of hibernation, and we said, oh, wow, look at the world, it did all this amazing stuff. What we'd want to see is we'd want to see zero carbon buildings and facilities, we'd want to see a netzero productive economy in Canada. And we want to see meaningful careers, you know, purposeful, meaningful careers for people. So those are the three major kind of impact areas we're working towards. And we see energy efficiency in the policies and investments related to energy efficiencies as the way of us getting there.   Dan Seguin  04:51 In the intro for the show, I talk about the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. What are some of the evidence base Best practices that the UN recommends the government should follow in. Do you feel that these standards have started a long overdue global conversation?   Corey Diamond  05:11 I would say that as far as an overdue conversation, yes, certainly things have been amped up. But people have been talking about this for decades. And it has been fairly central to, you know, you know, humanity on earth in trying to tackle with emissions reductions since the Rio summit in 92. You know, we look at the International Energy Agency, or the IEA is kind of the most definitive kind of global organization that is, you know, working in this space. And they spend a lot of time particularly since COVID started, on really trying to kind of think about clean energy, energy efficiency, and how will help with with the world's economic recovery, the thing that they look at is they say, Okay, if we're going to reach this, like Paris commitment that the world's governments have come together on, how do we do that, and they looked at and said, Look, 40% of the global climate commitments are going to come from energy efficiency. So it's a significant amount. And I would suspect that many agencies in the UN are also trying to figure that out in the context of the Sustainable Development Goals. So that means looking at buildings, it means looking at transportation, it means looking at industry. And it really means taking that long overdue conversation and going a lot deeper than the way we've done it before. And I think we're starting to see a bit of a sea change. We're at a very pivotal moment in the world right now, where I wish somebody I mean, I'm sure someone has an online, but it'd be so interesting just to get a tracking list of the governments and the corporations who have committed to a netzero future, and then kind of work backwards from that and see, okay, how do we unleash this massive potential energy efficiency to help us get there?   Dan Seguin  06:55 Corey? Can you help me better understand how Canada can grow its economy while reducing emissions, and building resilience to adapt to a changing climate? Do you have examples of other countries, like Australia, that are proving why energy efficiency plays a big part in their economy?   Corey Diamond  07:18 So certainly, there's an economic benefit when you just eliminate waste, right? It's common sense. My daughter's in grade six and I'm sure she's been learning that since kindergarten, right? You know, why? Why are we wasting, you know, there's no benefits from that. And so when we think about energy efficiency, the first thing sort of economic benefit we can think of are the direct jobs. So when the retrofit economy, people coming in retrofitting buildings, or making industrial facilities more efficient, it's a lot of people to do that work, you get a lot of labor involved in order to make that happen, there's no other way to do it. So what ends up happening is that that work is almost overwhelmingly local, you've got local contractors, local suppliers, and these are people in every community across the country who can do that work. So with the right policies and investment and direction, then you start to unleash that kind of job creation, you know, type of thing. So then you look at, okay, not only the direct jobs, but let's look at what happens indirectly, you know, when we save, so naturally, when we save the money, then re circulates back into the economy to do other things, and more productive things, not just spending it on waste. I like to think of it as you know, there's a restaurant at the top of my street. And let's say they, they undertook a, you know, an energy audit, and then did a whole bunch of energy retrofits. So the first thing they did is they hired a whole bunch of people, those people, you know, got jobs and got work and got to do the work. And then this restaurant thought, huh, look at that, we've cut our energy bill by 50%. Why don't we reinvest that into building a brand new patio, and all of a sudden, they built a new patio where they can put more tables, they had to hire two more servers, and they're recycling all that savings back into the economy for productive things. So you get the job creation of the headset, you get the job creation throughout, and you start seeing people do that. You asked about, you know, kind of where else in the world is this happening? There was a study that came out by the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy, the AC Triple E. They do it every two years. The last one was done in 2018. And they actually rank they do a global ranking of all the countries in the world and who's doing the best. and Canada came in 10th and actually tied with the US. And you know, there's some really good insight in there as to which countries are doing great on certain types of things. Certainly in Europe, you're seeing a lot of activity, and you're not not just historically in Europe. Have you seen it? I think Italy was ranked number one with Germany, they've done a lot of work for many, many decades on this. But what you're starting to see now is the European Union really kind of baking in energy efficiency as part of their economic recovery. And they called the Green New Deal. And they're really trying to kind of relaunch the European economy in this way. And one of the things they did is, I love the marketing and the names they use and things like that. They called it the renovation wave. And there's, you know, there's 32 member states in the EU. And they basically, you know, have a plan to double energy efficiency and building retrofits over the next 10 years. And they're going to create hundreds of 1000s of jobs, and they're going to lower people's energy bills, and they're going to put people back to work. And, you know, they're just doing it and, you know, it comes with a strategy, and it comes with the mandates for the states, and most importantly, comes with money. So they're really kind of, you know, locking it down and saying this going to be a core part of our recovery. So we get a lot of inspiration from our friends and colleagues in Europe, who are, you know, pushing ahead in this way, and starting to see that kind of unlocked here as well,   Dan Seguin  11:07 Is energy efficiency making significant contributions to economic growth in job creation in Canada, into the productivity and competitiveness of Canadian industries?   Corey Diamond  11:19 You know, one of the things we lack, I think this goes for everything in the clean energy space is it's tough to get data, but we do have some data, and it's very encouraging. Our friends at Eco-Canada in Alberta, they came up with a study a couple years ago, and they counted it, they counted up the numbers of people who work in the Energy Efficiency sector, and it's over 436,000 people in Canada. And that's over 51,000, organizations, companies, businesses, things like that, you know, that's more than the telecommunications and the oil and gas sector combined. So there's a lot of people doing this work already. It's overwhelmingly small businesses, independence type, folks. And you're starting to see more of that, you know, some analysis we did we kind of looked at, okay, well, that's the current status, what if we actually enacted and implemented all of the policies that are on the federal government's books, and we saw that we would, we would generate 118,000 annual jobs a year just from doing the things that are in those policies. So again, it backs up that kind of theory we've been having around that local job creation and things. On the industrial side, it's harder to get a number, not a lot of this is tracked. But we do know that, anecdotally that we're starting to see, you know, industries using more energy management systems incorporating this, one of the challenges on the industrial side is, is you're competing for capital projects, or you're competing internally for like, you know, hey, we could like change this system out, that system out, we can do energy efficiency, we can do all these types of things. So you see a bit of a challenge there. But one last economic data point that we just found that actually, which is really encouraging is that not only are we, you know, employing a lot of people, and there's a lot of activity in Canada, but we're also exporting a lot. In fact, the second biggest clean tech export, Canada's clean tech export is energy efficient equipment services. So that's really cool to see too, because there's a huge opportunity of a world market going in this direction. I you know, I just mentioned Europe, is there an opportunity for Canadian companies to take their knowledge, their technologies, their know how, and export that and grow economies around the world as well?   Dan Seguin  13:48 I'm very interested in your thoughts as it relates to the updated federal climate plan, and how you think it will advance energy efficiency?   Corey Diamond  13:58 Well, I am really glad you asked that question. Because my colleague, Brendan Haley, our policy director, he actually wrote a blog called 16 ways the new climate plan advances energy efficiency. So I'm not gonna go through all 16 because then, you know, this will be a very long podcast, but I want to highlight a few things and really three things. So number one, the first thing we see is a major priority placed or an emphasis placed on energy efficiency in the climate plan. The first section, if you go to the plan, the first section is called cutting energy waste. So this is in line with, you know, what I was saying earlier around the value and the benefits that flow when we just get rid of waste first. So that was really cool from a theoretical standpoint, and from a priority standpoint that the federal government is seeing this as a big opportunity. The second thing we see is that there's money. Last year, the federal government announced $6.1 billion for Energy efficiency programs. These are things for home retrofits for financing for commercial energy efficiency upgrades, and for a brand new program around municipal buildings and in the community, so we're starting to see some, some major dollars. And if you put that into context, we look at how each province does every year and energy efficiency, and we kind of, you know, added it up last year, the provinces combined spend $1.2 billion on energy efficiency. So, you know, adding $6 billion into the system is a big step. So, we saw that in the climate plan. And the third thing is, we saw mentioned and sort of a doubling down on some supporting or enabling policies, specifically around building codes. And this is something that we're tracking very closely advocating for, and making sure that any new building that's being built today is built at the highest standard, using the least amount of energy. And so it was really good to see that, you know, obviously, money is good, and priorities are good and investments, great, but just, you know, sometimes it's a, it's a policy, you know, turn of the pen, that actually gets us to where we want to be. But, you know, as an advocate for energy efficiency, I would be remiss not to also outline what's missing. So give me a chance. One thing we're, you know, really, you know, pushing for is a program for low income Canadians. And, you know, this is all the more important because of the situation today, as many people find that they're spending an overwhelming amount of their income on energy. And there's a huge opportunity to support low to moderate income Canadians with a program. So we're really pushing hard for the federal government to do that. And this is especially important because the carbon price is, you know, intended to rise considerably between now and 2030. So, again, that will create more of a burden for those that are finding it already hard to pay for energy bills, we look at it as kind of an energy justice view. And, and we're really, you know, looking for that to be included as part of a beefed up plan by the federal government.   Dan Seguin  17:17 Canada faces the threat of a recession due to multiple shocks spurred by the pandemic, since it's a given that the government will need to lead the economic recovery with sustainable investments, many world leaders are calling for economic recovery plans that pave the way to a zero carbon economy. How can energy efficiency help Canada recover from COVID-19? And how can it lead this economic recovery?   Corey Diamond  17:49 Yeah, it's a really good question. In fact, you know, starting last March, when, you know, when the world turned upside down, we kind of, you know, we're a small shop, we're 8 people and we, you know, we got together, you know, online, and we're starting to figure out, Okay, what what can we do? And how do we essentially pivot or work towards ensuring that the economic recovery has energy efficiency baked into it? So we did some work on that and we also supported a group of economists and policymakers, you know, a nonpartisan group from across the country called the Task Force for Resilient Recovery. And we helped them shape the energy efficiency recommendations for Canada's economic recovery. But we looked, we basically looked at it first. Okay, so why would you invest in energy efficiency to help Canada recover, and we came up with five things. So I'll quickly just kind of outline those. So if you're listening at home, and you want to take notes, here we go. First is obviously I've already stated this creates jobs. So you know, there's a lot of people whose lives have been disrupted, there's a huge opportunity, there is so much energy waste in Canada, that we can put a lot of people back to work doing it. The second thing is it increases consumer spending in the local economy. So as I mentioned earlier, that example of, you know, the restaurant at the top of my street, what ends up happening is you start to boost local economies, when you do this, people spend, they hire local contractors, but then they have savings. And then they spend that again, and so it ends up circulating back into the local economy, which helps with economic recovery. The third thing is, you know, it's through government, investment or government policies, government procurement, what you end up creating is a, essentially a pipeline of projects. And, and that builds, you know, investor confidence, you know, with financial institutions and different stakeholders in the sector, that there's a place where we can put our money that's going to generate a return on investment. That's really exciting. Now when everything is, you know, up in the air and other upside down, you know, one of the things you can pretty much bank on is that if you make certain changes, let's say to a building, you're going to get your savings back over time. And, you know, there's very sophisticated models that help you plan that out. And, it always works. So that kind of investor confidence where people can kind of start to take their money and kind of place it somewhere is a really important thing, as you know, economies try to get out of recessions. The fourth thing is, is the link between energy efficiency and kind of managing ongoing concerns related to COVID-19. You know, you know, things related to ventilation, things related to how we are interacting with our indoor environments now is a huge part of, you know, the Future Part of Canada. And so baking in energy efficiency, and combining energy efficiency, design or renovation as part of a way to manage pandemic concerns is another reason why it's a core part of recovery. And then the last thing is, and, you know, there's some work being done by the insurance bureau of Canada and a lot of great people across the country around resilience. And I think this is something that energy efficiency and making buildings and, and, you know, our infrastructure more resilient, is, is going to be key, because no matter what we do now, as far as emissions, a lot of the emissions are historically locked in. And so how do you combine energy efficiency, to help our buildings manage and adapt to a changing environment? Another reason why it's such a core part of our recovery.   Dan Seguin  21:42 Okay, so let's move to the next question. What kind of funding for energy efficiency and retrofit projects are you hoping for with respect to Canada's economic recovery being a green recovery?   Corey Diamond  21:55 Yeah, so we kind of work backwards and thought, okay, so if we need to get to a certain point within five years, and what that looks like, is essentially a tripling of our activity now of energy efficiency activity. It's about a $27 billion investment, that's a lot of money. And, and that's over five years. But the interesting thing about it, you know, when we talk about this, we don't, we don't necessarily talk about energy efficiency is, you know, one time payment, and it's out the door. As I was saying earlier, from an economic standpoint, it really is an investment. This is about how you structure your economy and your society to eliminate the bad parts of it. And so to do that, you invest and you invest in the types of things that are going to generate jobs, you invest in the types of things that are going to circulate money in the local economy. So that's, that's 27 billion over five years, as I mentioned earlier, this is that that's a recommendation to the federal government only. We have seen $6 billion dollars announced in programs thus far. So we're on our way. But certainly there's a long way to go, especially if we're going to keep up with some of the plans that we're seeing around the world, including President Biden's plan, climate plan. And then as I mentioned earlier, the European new green New Deal, which is really kind of paving the way for significant investment in this.   Dan Seguin  23:22 Aside from the need for more financial support from our governments, what sort of policy changes must happen to bring our energy efficiency game to the next level?   Corey Diamond  23:34 Yeah, it's a good question. I kind of touched on the building code piece earlier, you know, that's definitely one of them. 60% of our new buildings, you know, that you build today are going to be around by 2050. And I was actually thinking about that number, I was doing a walk this morning, and I was looking around, I'm like, pretty much every building in my neighborhood is over 100 years old. So if you're, if you have an ambition, like, you know, governments, corporations around the world are pushing towards net zero by 2050. Why would you lock in carbon right now, with every new building, you know, especially when we have the technology, the know how, the services, the workforce to do that? Why are we doing that? And so we're pushing as hard as we can to make sure that all levels of government are looking at new building codes, and also, you know, what they call alterations to existing building codes. So thinking about what we do with all of the existing building stock to bring that up to a level that is Net Zero Energy Ready. So we need that immediately. We're, you know, spending a lot of time advocating to governments across Canada on that. The second thing we need is, is policies related to workforce development, you know, certainly COVID has kind of put Canada and all nations around the world into a bit of a pickle, right? We are we're kind of stuck here where we're trying to figure out where do we go from here and how does that The world change because of the situation we're in right now, that requires some real thinking and requires to match the kind of policy ambition you want to see in the climate side with significant investment or matching investment in developing the workforce, for that policy and vision, certainly the market will dictate certain things. And, you know, I think we're already seeing that in the energy efficiency sector, but policies have a huge impact on where this market goes. And particularly, we need to match that policy with ensuring that people understand that there are various different career pathways they could take in the sector, that it could be a safe landing space. And, you know, the energy efficiency sector, just like many sectors in the country needs to up its game and its inclusion of women and inclusion of a more diverse workforce. What a great opportunity we're in right now to do that. And, and it's, it's an exciting time. And I think that, you know, especially with young people who are looking at the way the world is going, they want purposeful work, they want meaningful work, they want to do stuff that helps you know themselves, but also helps the country and the climate. And I think we're gonna need some leadership in this country around that so that people are nudged in this direction, and given an opportunity to enter a workforce that is meaningful, that is purposeful, and that helps us, you know, ultimately get to the net zero emissions future we want to see.   Dan Seguin  26:36 Efficiency Canada has recently published its second annual provincial energy efficiency scorecard, which ranks Ontario fourth in the country overall, in 2020. What are the key focus areas or topics that contribute to those rankings? And can you maybe highlight one or two things that Ontario is doing very well with? And what the key areas of improvements are?   Corey Diamond  27:03 Yeah, So what we do is we look at a number of things, we look at how each province is doing on their programs, so energy efficiency programs that they're providing to, to people, we look at the enabling policies - so like I mentioned things like building codes - we look at how they're doing on buildings, we look at how they're doing on transportation, and then we also track industry. Ee do that across the country. And we look at every single province, we're starting to bring into territories, you're right, Ontario is now ranked fourth, it's a slip, they were third in the previous year. So you're starting to see some backwards movement in Ontario, largely due to some of the cancellations of programs when premier Ford came in, but they're doing some good things, we are doing some good things here, you know, we'd like to see, for example, do some innovative stuff, you know, non wire or non non pipe alternatives. Certainly the ISEO is moving ahead with an auction around energy efficiency, that's new Enbridge doing some geo targeting stuff. So there's some cool stuff going on as far as kind of taking efficiency out of the more traditional realm and kind of pushing the barriers a bit. So so we like to see that. But it can definitely improve, we can definitely improve things here. There's two areas that we called out in our scorecard around improvement. One is around natural gas savings. You know, Enbridge does a great job in delivering and implementing energy efficiency. But we noticed that in 2018, the Ontario government actually in their environment plan called for a significant increase in natural gas savings as part of its environment plan. And then when it came down to, you know, directing the Ontario energy board around that they basically said you don't need to, to listen to our environment plan. So that was that was a bit of a step backwards, I think, you know, at least from our perspective, because there's a massive opportunity to do more on natural gas savings by a bunch of experts who know what they're doing. And then the second thing around improvement is really around electric vehicles, because we track that too. And, you know, 1% of vehicle registrations in Ontario are EVs. And if you compare that across the country, BC is at seven 7%. Quebec almost at 6%. It's been in the news a lot lately, because Will Ferrell was in the commercial, but Norway's at 50%. So, you know, we can do this and it's largely driven by policy, right? That's how you do that. And so, you know, especially,now in Ontario, where there's been some great announcements around, you know, essentially making these cars here. I think it's time that we started to see a much more aggressive push to enable Ontarians to access these types of vehicles as well.   Dan Seguin  29:52 Okay, Cory, as we close out part one of our discussion on energy efficiency. What do you think is the most important thing utilities, governments, regulators, businesses and consumers can do to accelerate clean power and electrification? And what will be the biggest barrier to getting there?   Corey Diamond  30:14 That's the money question these days, right? I would probably have the same answers I would have for anything going on in 2021. That, you know, we need to treat this situation we're in as the emergency that it is. And I think, you know, all of us who have lived through the past, you know, 11 months have seen us, you know, respond to an emergency. And, you know, it's no secret that the chaos that the climate crisis is going to create, or is creating right now, for many, many people around the world is going to be something that we can't even imagine. And, you know, if you are a decision maker in a utility or business or regulator in a government, we need to start thinking of this as a significant emergency, which means we need to act much faster. And, and, and, and much deeper than we've ever worked before. And I think we can do that. Because the stuff we're talking about is not controversial. I mean, compared to a lot of other policies out there. Maximizing energy efficiency is not controversial. It's got broad, nonpartisan support, we've got states down and south of us, or countries in the US that are way beyond where we are today. So getting there is not not the hard part, and you know, it's safe. So I think we need to maximize this as fast as possible, because the cost of inaction is just far too high. You know, not just, you know, morally, but, but but financially and socially as well. So what's the barrier to that, you know, I, you know, I guess it's just inertia and, and, you know, a general lack of treating it as, as the emergency that is, and, you know, the savings levels that we're aspiring to, and, you know, the types of things we're calling for, you know, shouldn't have that much political inertia in it, and we're starting to see a big change, we're starting to see a shift to that, but nowhere near the level that we need to in order to move at the speed and the depth that that we need to so I think the way to do that overcome that barrier is really kind of what we're trying to do it efficiency Canada, which is really trying to organize this sector and, and come together as a, you know, a really intelligent and kind of future forward thinking sector to unlock that inertia, and organize ourselves to make it make it known that this is a real solution. I know we can do it. We just have to, we just have to do it. Yeah.   Dan Seguin  32:48 We've reached the end of another episode of The ThinkEnergy podcast. Thank you so much, Cory, for joining me today. I would usually close off with some rapid fire questions, but I'll save those for when you join me next time on part two of our chat about energy efficiency. And we take a deeper dive into what energy efficiency means at the local level of municipalities, businesses, and homeowners. Thank you so much for joining me today. I hope you had a lot of fun.

Nuclear is a word with numerous applications that mean wildly different things: nuclear family, nuclear bomb, nuclear war. In this episode, we chat about nuclear energy with Matthew Mairinger - a technical engineer at Ontario Power Generation and the Canadian Operating Officer at The North American Young Generation in Nuclear - and debunk some of the most common myths associated with it. Is it safe? What impact does it have on the environment? Is radiation something to be concerned about? Tune in to hear why there’s nothing forced about Matthew’s positivity over the future of nuclear energy.   Related Content & Links:  - Matthew Mairinger Twitter: @MattwithchipsLinkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthew-mairinger-p-eng-19524380/  - The North American Young Generation in Nuclear Twitter: @NA_YGNWebsite: https://naygn.org/   Transcript: Dan Seguin  00:02 Hey, everyone, welcome back to another episode of the ThinkEnergy podcast. Nuclear is a word with numerous applications that mean wildly different things, nuclear family, nuclear bomb, nuclear war, and the Springfield nuclear power plant where someone like Homer Simpson seems to be the sole control room operator "d'oh". Nothing scary about that! When most people think of clean energy, they immediately conjure up images of solar panels, wind turbines, and hydro power. But how many of you also thought of nuclear reactors? The truth is nuclear power is often left out of the Clean Energy conversation despite it being the second largest source of low carbon electricity in the world. In fact, according to the American Nuclear Society, the third most popular myth about nuclear energy is that it's bad for the environment. But the reality is that nuclear reactors don't emit greenhouse gases. And over their lifetime, they have comparable emissions to wind and solar. Here in Canada, nuclear plants have been producing electricity since the early 1960s. And with 19 nuclear power reactors, mostly in Ontario, nuclear energy produces about 15% of the country's electricity. That's 13.5 gigawatts of electrical power capacity. Despite producing massive amounts of carbon free power, nuclear energy also produces more electricity on less land than any other clean air source. A typical 1000 megawatt nuclear facility will occupy approximately only one square mile for its operations. Recent estimates of the Canadian nuclear industry reveal that it employs approximately 30,000 people and creates another 30,000 indirect jobs through contracting. It also generates revenues of $6.6 billion and contributes $1.5 billion in federal and provincial taxes. So here's today's big question. What does the future of nuclear energy look like for the next generation? And how is Canada leading the way internationally with some exciting developments in nuclear technology? To help us better understand the role nuclear plays in Canada and the talented people behind the scenes, we have with us today, a nuclear engineer from the Ontario Power Generation, and the Canadian Operating Officer for the nonprofit organization, North American Young Generation in nuclear. I'm very pleased to have Matthew Mairinger on our show. Welcome, Matthew, could you maybe start by telling us a bit about yourself and what attracted you to the career in nuclear energy?   Matthew Mairinger  04:13 I guess I really got interested in nuclear in high school. It was just an essay that we got to do about any topic in science. I started looking into nuclear power. And I was just like, Wow, this is amazing the energy density, how it can fight climate change the medical isotopes we get from it so that really got me hooked. And from there, I went to University of Ontario Institute of Technology, where I studied nuclear engineering. I've been working full time at Ontario Power Generation at both the Darlington and Pickering nuclear stations ever since. And on the side I'm also a board of director with North American Young Generation Nuclear, Canadian Nuclear Association with the International Youth nuclear Congress. I'm also on the Energy Council of Canada as a young professional member. So lots of things, but it's all focused around energy and specifically nuclear,   Dan Seguin  05:09 Generally speaking, what important role does nuclear energy play in Canada? In your opinion? Why should Canada and other countries around the world continue investing in nuclear energy?   Matthew Mairinger  05:22 Yeah, so nuclear plays a huge role in Canada, and especially for Ontario. So nuclear technology, each year displaces 80 million tons of CO2 emissions, which is around 17 million cars. Also 70% of the world's supply of cobalt 60, which is used for cancer treatment, to sterilize medical equipment, to sterilize food and to do inspection of materials comes from Canada as well. So it's a huge portion of the world's cobalt 60. In terms of jobs and the economy, it contributes $17 billion to Canada's economy each year. And it has 76,000 direct and indirect jobs. So it's a lot of work behind the scenes. And it's a huge backbone of well paying stable jobs here in Canada. So why should other countries around the world continue investing? So really, it's to do with uranium and nuclear itself. So uranium 235, which is one of the isotopes that we use for nuclear fission, contains two to 3 million times the energy equivalent of oil or coal, so you're just getting so much more bang for your buck for that. And that means that it can use a much smaller land footprint, use less materials and produce less waste, it also has a huge capacity factor. So if you're looking at what's going to produce stable, dependable energy, it's really nuclear, which is over 90% capacity factor. So if we're looking to electrify the grid, we're looking to charge electric cars overnight. If we're looking to run hospitals reliably, you know, it's the nuclear facilities that have a 60 to 80 year lifespan, high dependability, high capacity factor. And if we look at the countries that have been able to decarbonize the fastest, so Sweden, France, United Arab Emirates, they've actually used nuclear to get there. So contrary to what people may think that nuclear takes a long time to build, to get going. It's really quick at decarbonizing countries.   Dan Seguin  07:30 Okay, Matthew, you're on the board of directors for the nonprofit organization, North American, young generation in nuclear. What is your organization's mandate? And what is it that you hope to provide the future nuclear enthusiasts and professionals like yourself?   Matthew Mairinger  07:50 Yes, so there's 50 young generation and nuclear organizations around the world. Typically, either countries or big organizations will have their own youth nonprofit group for NAYGN. It's all across North America. And really, we provide opportunities for young generation of nuclear enthusiasts to develop leadership and professional skills, create lifelong connections, engage and inform the public and inspire today's nuclear technology professionals to meet the challenges of the 21st century. So, so mouthful, really, we're trying to develop leaders to energize the future of nuclear. And we do that through professional development. So we put on facility tours, where members get to go see how the fuel is made, or what a research reactor looks like. We do work with Toastmasters. So to increase your public speaking abilities, we do community service, so we go out, we work with Habitat for Humanity, we work with other groups in the communities to give back as well. So we give them an avenue to give back to the community and also to put a positive spin on nuclear, but also young people as well. You know, there's this, this misconception that millennials are lazy, and we're this not the best type of group out there. So we're trying to fix that. We also do networking events. So again, just an avenue to get to know other people in the industry. So we'll do Blue Jays games, we'll go to sporting events. And we work on public information as well.   Dan Seguin  09:24 Maybe you can expand now on how your organization is working to be a source of science based information about applications of nuclear science and technology for use by the media, policymakers and the general public.   Matthew Mairinger  09:42 Yeah, so that's a huge backbone. So one of our board of directors is the public information officer. And so under that board seat, there's actually student education and government relations. So two separate committees that have a big focus for any NAYGN. So for student education, Each year we run a drawing contest. So we go to elementary schools, we have a different topic. So we'll talk to them about nuclear. And we'll get them engaged thinking about it. At high schools, we have an essay contest again. So just trying to make nuclear not a secret, not this unknown. You know, we're going to schools, we're talking about it. We actually developed our own children's books a couple years ago. So the first one is Marie's Electric adventure. And the second one, the sequel is George's energy adventure. So we bring that to schools, we do school readings. And really what we're trying to do is we're trying to talk about nuclear, in a friendly tone, we're trying to expose students at a younger age to think about it as a career to promote it as a stem opportunity as well. So just trying to debunk some of the myths out there, get them interested at an early age, for government relations, we do postcard push days. So we encourage our members to send postcards to Washington and Ottawa, we do rallies, we do stand up for nuclear, we participate in Clean Energy Ministerial United Nations Climate conferences, so really trying to advocate for nuclear from a nonprofit youth organization. So it's a little bit different than having company representatives there that we are in our free time, volunteers advocating for climate change.   Dan Seguin  11:27 Okay, Matthew, your organization recently signed a memorandum of understanding with electricity, Human Resources Canada. What can you tell us about the importance of this collaboration?   Matthew Mairinger  11:40 Yeah, being a youth nonprofit organization, we try to work with other organizations out there, we're not trying to create everything from scratch. So EHRC really has a huge network of not just nuclear groups, but clean energy groups, as well. So a lot of expertise out there that we could tap into. And really what it is, is they have a great focus for diversity. And they have a great focus for the young generation. So they've done specific surveys about young people across Canada in the electricity sector. So it made a lot of sense for us to share what we're doing with them. And then also for us to learn about what they're doing in the industry as well.   Dan Seguin  12:23 Now, your organization has also been an advocate and champion for diversity and inclusion within the nuclear sector. Can you maybe tell us about what it means to you and what it means to the nuclear industry.   Matthew Mairinger  12:41 So I think it was really, especially during COVID, and the events that happened around the world last year, that really brought diversity and inclusion to the forefront. And we saw a lot of the statements that were made across the electricity sector across other companies as well. And we want to make sure that when we said something as a board that we made it part of our long term strategic initiatives, it wasn't just a shallow statement that, you know, as soon as it went out of the public's attention span that it would go away. So every two years, we actually run our own career report, we send out survey questions to our members. And we found that the gender diversity was pretty close to the industry, but still lagging. So that's around 35% women, and the rest were men. So because of that, we also found that our diversity in terms of minorities and representation, were actually lagging in the industry. So this was kind of a shock to us. And we thought, as a nonprofit, we're doing really well on this. And really, we took a strong look at ourselves. And what we did was we had an external audit of our organization for diversity and inclusion. And really, they had a number of things that we could change. So, you know, we noticed that when we did our survey, we had a binary gender collection, so it was male or female. So we're going to change that going forward. We noticed when we had speakers, were we considering the diversity of the speakers. So that was another thing for us to self reflect on. We have a book club, where we choose diverse authors and diverse types of topics to discuss, our website -where the picture is being shown that it shows diverse and inclusive crowds, the video content, and this was really interesting. We didn't have captions on our videos. So we were actually, you know, a bias against muted viewing and hearing impaired. So again, just simple things like this, targeting our reach and amplifying NAYGN's diverse communities as well. So from that we started creating an unconscious bias webinar series. We had chapter recognition so we have awards now specifically to recognize diversity and inclusion at the chapter level, we're changing our nomination process or elections. And we actually signed on to existing types of initiatives. So that equal by 30, and then through EHRC's leadership accords, and we signed an MOU with women and nuclear and National Society of Black Engineers we're working on as well.   Dan Seguin  15:22 Now, Matthew, are you seeing a shift in what nuclear professionals care about? What are some of today's challenges for nuclear technology professionals?   Matthew Mairinger  15:34 Yeah, so I'd say young nuclear professionals today, they care more about that work-life balance, and especially now with COVID, we've seen that you know, the work from home, and having more flexible hours, that's a big thing. If you're taking care of a family, you want that flexibility. And we also see that a lot of the young nuclear professionals really care about the impact to the community. So what is that company doing to give back to the community? Are they involved in community outreach events? Are they involved in supporting local types of initiatives? So really, that's what we're starting to see more of a focus for the young professionals is, you know, they really want the company to reflect their values they want to have that are part of their core mandates. And some of the challenges right now, I'd say are the energy uncertainty right now. So, you know, nuclear does require an investment from the government. So if Pickering nuclear is shutting down, that is the uncertain future is what is the long term Energy Outlook going to look like? Will there be a job for them? Is it worth studying in school? Because it takes a long time to license to do the environmental assessment. So that's kind of always on the top of people's minds. What does the government think of nuclear energy?   Dan Seguin  16:56 So I hear that you work at the Darlington Nuclear Generating Station in Ontario. Maybe now you can help me better understand why nuclear power plants, particularly Canada's, are considered among the safest and most secure facilities in the world. And can you talk to us a bit about plans for the refurbishment of existing plants and why it's so important?   Matthew Mairinger  17:26 Yeah, so I think it's, it's almost like an aircraft. When people get on an airplane, you know, they may hear of an accident and they think it's unsafe. But the most unsafe thing you do for air travel is driving to the airport. It's a human's ability to risk perceive. So Nuclear Generating stations are actually among the safest in the world. And we take that down to the lowest level. So when you go to the OPG sites, hold the handrails, there's a defensive driving type of computer based training that we take. And also after the Chernobyl accident, the World Association of Nuclear Operators was created. So they do external audits for safety all across the world. There's also insurance inspections. There's the United Nations inspections. So there's all these different groups doing independent reviews for safety. But safety is the number one priority. And we definitely see that reflected in the company culture. In terms of refurbishment. So Ontario began refurbishing 10 of its 18 power reactors in 2016. And refurbishment is expected to create over 30,000 jobs for the duration of the project. So just a huge amount of jobs being created. And if we look at the cost of nuclear, it averaged around 6.9 cents per kilowatt hour, which was 30%, below the provincial average. And after the refurbishment, we're looking at the cost of nuclear in 2015 speed eight cents a kilowatt hour. So Still, the second cheapest after hydro. So that's why it's so important. It has such a big contribution to getting to net zero to reducing emissions for providing well paying jobs and fighting the climate change that we need to have as a focus.   Dan Seguin  19:18 Matthew, all nuclear power reactors in Canada are candu reactors, correct? Okay. First, what does CANDU stand for? Second, I was made aware that several other countries use our technology. At a high level, what sets Canada's reactors apart?   Matthew Mairinger  19:40 Yeah, so we have 19 reactors here in Canada, 18 of them in Ontario, and all of them are the CANDU type reactors, so CANDU is actually an acronym for Canadian, deuterium, uranium. So that's what it actually stands for. What that means is, that's really how it So Canadian self explanatory, deuterium is heavy water. So instead of using light water, which is the normal water that everyone's used to, heavy water actually has an extra neutron in it, which is really good for slowing down neutrons to make a really efficient reactor. And really, that's what set ours apart from other types of reactors. So around the world, there's gas cooled reactors, there's light water graphite reactors, there's fast breeders, pressurized heavy water reactors, pressurized water reactors, boiling water reactors, so lots of different types of technologies that they use. Fundamentally, there are three big ones, pressurized water reactors, they pressurize the one side of the system, so that the water never boils, boiling water reactor, it just has one open system. So as soon as the water is heated up from passing over the reactor, it boils, it's all open to the same type of system. And the candu type of reactors, they're really different, because instead of enriching the fuel, we use natural uranium. But what we do is we use that heavy water as the moderator. So we actually spend some money upfront and change the water to this different type of properties, which is good at slowing down the neutrons, so then we don't have to enrich the fuel. So what this means is, we don't need enriched fuel. And then when we're done with our fuel, it's a much lower enrichment. So when we're having that spent fuel put away, it's a much lower radioactivity than if we had enriched that. So it's, it's really hard to say which one is better. They all have their pros and their cons. The good thing about the candu technology as it has two independent shutdown systems, because it uses your natural uranium, it is much safer to handle and to dispose of, we have a vacuum structure. So I quite like the Canadian technology, I think it's really good. We have a really good supply of uranium here in Canada. So it made sense for us to use that natural product rather than building enrichment facilities and going through those extra steps.   Dan Seguin  22:17 Now, there's still a myth that nuclear energy is not safe. Some associate nuclear bombs with nuclear reactors. I'm not sure if you watch the HBO series Chernobyl. But can you explain to the audience why an incident, like what occurred in the Soviet Union in 1986 is very unlikely to happen here. Perhaps you can also talk a bit about radiation.   Matthew Mairinger  22:48 Yeah. So I always just like to start off with a quote, this comes from the book A Bright Future. It says, "In thinking about nuclear power safety, one should always ask compared to what? And the answer is compared to coal, the world's dominant and fastest growing fuel, the leading cause of climate change, the fuel that kills a million people a year - compared to that." So I think we always have to ground ourselves in what we are actually comparing to. And if you look at the numbers, the best analysis for safety is called the death footprint. What it does is it compares coal, it compares oil and hydro, compares nuclear, solar and wind, to the worst case scenarios from Fukushima, Chernobyl. And it says how many people are actually dying from this energy source at the same amount of energy produced, so it puts it all on the same scale. And what it actually shows is that nuclear is orders of magnitude safer than coal and oil, because it doesn't produce pollution. So millions of people every year are dying from pollution from respiratory issues. And nuclear energy, for example, results in 99.8% fewer deaths than brown coal. So it is just so clean. And again, it's this people see a Chernobyl miniseries on HBO, it's you know, produced by Hollywood, they say a large number of people died, where people hear about it in the News, the news and everything else is to amplify the message. So it's trying to do this scare tactic to really, you know, show nuclear disaster in Japan, but no one really follows up on it. So it is amongst the safest. It produces no carbon dioxide, it doesn't produce mercury, and it doesn't produce all these harmful things that burning coal and gas does as well, and why it's very unlikely here compared to Chernobyl. So Chernobyl was a nuclear design that used graphite as a moderator. It had no containment structure. It was run during the, in the Soviet times during the Cold War, where they had no external agencies looking at it, they had political appointees in the control room, just almost everything wrong you could possibly imagine was done there. So, so now we have independent shutdown systems, we have containment structures, we have external agencies looking at the safety records. So there's just so much that has changed from that. And nuclear technology is so new people forget that, you know, it's only in the last 50-60 years that we learned about it. So there was obviously going to be some bumps in the road at the start. But you know, we've learned from that, especially these new designs, they're passively safe. They're inherently safe. So we've taken those lessons learned. And it's very, very, very unlikely here. So in terms of radiation,  one thing I just want to get right off the bat is, radiation is a form of heat transfer, there's conduction, there's convection, and then there's radiation. And radiation as a form of heat transfer is how we actually heat up the planet. So across the vacuum, radiation is the only way to transfer heat from the Sun to the Earth through space, which is a vacuum. Now, the electromagnetic spectrum, which includes x rays, gamma rays, but also radio waves, and microwaves and visible light that we see, we can only see a billionth of a billionth portion of that electromagnetic spectrum. And for non ionizing radiation, that ionization means that the radiation's energy can produce ions, which are charged atoms by knocking negatively charged electrons off of a neutral atom. So non ionizing radiation, there is no proven biological mechanism whereby non ionizing radiation might cause cancer. So those are the radio waves that we come in contact with. That's all the microwaves that we see out there. It's only when we come into the higher energy, which are the X rays, and the gamma rays, which are actually higher frequency waves, that they are considered ionizing radiation. So with that in mind, just want to say that, on average, we all receive around two to three millisieverts of radiation each year. And that varies considerably based on how high up you are, you'll get more radiation at higher altitudes, and also the environment that you live in. So for resonance in Ramsar, Iran, they can receive up to 260 millisieverts per year, which is around 100 times the global average, just due to naturally occurring radioactive elements around them. But there's actually no evidence of any adverse health effects in those areas. So this is always good to keep in mind that there's no just standard level of radiation that people are exposed to. And it also depends on how many medical treatments you have. So some of the chemotherapy or medical imaging can introduce quite a bit more radiation into different people, radio sensitivities. So really the best analysis is the ICRP estimates that around 200 millisieverts raises the risk of cancer (fatal cancer) by 1%. So that's always good to keep in mind when we hear all these numbers and we see the dose charts after Chernobyl or Fukushima, and sometimes people forget, but the baseline lifetime cancer risk for females is around 38%. And for males is around 45%. So there's actually quite a bit of cancer, regardless of radiation just from the cells dividing. But radiation actually has a lot of positive things that it does. So when we have food, we can actually bombard it with radiation. So gamma rays, and this doesn't make the food radioactive. It doesn't make it harmful, but it destroys the bacteria which can cause a lot of problems around the world which has a lot of health issues. We can sterilize medical equipment with this. With radiation, we can treat cancers, we can do medical imaging, we can look for defects and products that we produce. So radiation is all around us. There's radon in your basement, there's potassium 40 in your bananas in the soil, there's radiation, actually, coal burns, releases quite a bit of radiation as well because they're just burning natural elements from the ground. So you'll release thorium, you'll release uranium, release polonium, so actually the stack from coal actually releases around 100 times more radiation than the nuclear station. So being around that. So I think that's always key, as well as to compare the radiation to other things around us. But radiation has been around since the start of the universe. It's, it's, it's there forever. And we're still living with the products there as well. Hope that explained it,   Dan Seguin  30:18 Matthew, how has the pandemic changed the nuclear landscape for Canada. Did you need to pivot, whether in terms of production or operations?   Matthew Mairinger  30:31 COVID, has actually really opened people's eyes to risk. So you know, now every day you go to the grocery store, you're taking a slight risk. And it really shows that there's always risks in the world. And we just need to define what we're comfortable with. And nuclear has also really been a backbone here during COVID. Because we need the hospitals, we need our homes to be heated, we need the grocery stores, we need these fundamental sources of electricity. And we need to be assured that while everyone's running around scared about toilet paper, I saw no one panic about electricity, which was really important. So I think people are learning more that electricity needs to be stable. We don't want blackouts, blackouts cost lives. And that was something that I think people are starting to become aware of. We did need to change some of our outages, so across the nuclear sector for refurbishment and outages, they do have a large amount of contractors and other people coming together. So some of those were deferred a couple of months due to COVID. But other than that, we've had stable electricity being produced across North America and across the world, to nuclear.   Dan Seguin  31:47 Let's talk about the future and Canada's role in nuclear innovation. I know this is something your organization is part of. But can you talk to us a bit about small modular reactors? What are they? And what are their benefits?   Matthew Mairinger  32:06 So I think we saw in the nuclear sector a growing trend to get bigger and bigger and bigger. You know, we started out with very small reactors, and then they got to 1000 megawatts electric 1300-1400. Because as you get a bigger type of reactor, in terms of neutron efficiency, it does have some advantages. But what we saw then was, you know, the only countries that could start to build these were countries that had fully developed nations, they had a lot of government support. And really, we're starting to exclude some of the key sectors. So for example, in the mining communities, for remote communities, for developing nations, they couldn't have access to this. So what small modular reactors really are, are, they're smaller. So you know, we're looking at the order of 300 megawatts electric and smaller, all the way down to under one megawatt electric, which is very good for remote communities for mining communities as well. They're modular, so they're prefabricated in manufacturing. So instead of doing everything on site, you can almost do it through economies of scale, where you produce all the components together and then that reduces the cost as well. And that also allows countries or organizations to start with one type of module. And you know, if the community expands in size, they can add a second one, so it's a modular design that allows them to expand as they need to. And again, this is the new type of designs that they're doing. So they would put these in the communities, they can't melt down, you can't make weapons from them. So they're using the latest type of physics in these types of designs. So there's many different types of designs, but really, what they're doing is they're taking the latest learnings, the latest operating experience, just to make them the safest. The other advantage of small modular reactors as well as they operate at a much higher temperature. So now what you can do is you can use that waste heat, you can split water into hydrogen, so you could be producing hydrogen for the transportation sector, you could look at desalinization, you have all these other type of benefits, since they operate at a much higher temperature, and they could be placed within communities   Dan Seguin  34:32 Per the small modular roadmap, when do you expect the first ones to come online?   Matthew Mairinger  34:39 Yes, so the first demonstration unit is going to be cited at Chalk River by 2026. And the first on-grid small modular reactors are actually going to be built at the Darlington site as early as 2028. But again, small modular reactors really have been in existence since the start of nuclear. They've been in submarines. They've been in demonstration units. So I think some people are concerned that this is a new technology, but really, we've had them for quite a long time. But now they're getting focused. They're trying to do new designs. But we've already seen this in the nuclear sector since the early 50s.   Dan Seguin  35:21 Okay, Matthew, are you ready to close this off with some rapid fire questions?   Matthew Mairinger  35:27 Sure.   Dan Seguin  35:28 Let's go with the first one. What is your favorite word?   Matthew Mairinger  35:32 Got to say, verbosity, it's just the quality of using more words than needed. wordiness I just think the word itself is so pretentious to describe pretentiousness, it's great.   Dan Seguin  35:45 What is one thing you can't live without?   Matthew Mairinger  35:48 Oxygen.   Dan Seguin  35:49 What habit or hobby Have you picked up during shelter in place?   Matthew Mairinger  35:55 So with the gyms closed, I really got back into running. So I ran my first marathon during that. So opened up a positive trait, I guess.   Dan Seguin  36:03 If you could have one superpower, what would it be?   Matthew Mairinger  36:08 Oh, time travel for sure.   Dan Seguin  36:11 If you could turn back time and talk to your 18 year old self, what would you tell him?   Matthew Mairinger  36:17 I'd say to get more involved in nonprofit into these types of organizations through high school through university. They provide a lot of benefits. And I really wasn't aware of them until after I graduated.   Dan Seguin  36:30 And lastly, what do you currently find most interesting in your sector?   Matthew Mairinger  36:37 So I think it's really our impact on fighting climate change, fighting pollution, you know, we're still kind of the underdog out there. So we're still fighting to get recognized but lots of opportunities. And I really think it's going to be the sector that makes the difference.   Dan Seguin  36:53 Well, Matthew, we've reached the end of another episode of The ThinkEnergy podcast. Again, thank you so much for joining us today. And I hope you had a lot of fun.   Matthew Mairinger  37:03 Yeah, no, thanks for having me. And great to be part of this.   Dan Seguin  37:11 Thank you for joining us today. I truly hope you enjoyed this episode of The ThinkEnergy podcast. For past episodes, make sure you visit our website hydroottawa.com/podcast. Lastly, if you found value in this podcast, be sure to subscribe. Anyway, this podcast is a wrap. Cheers, everyone.

[Traduction française du résumé et de la transcription du podcast ci-dessous.] Public transportation remains one of the only ways to move large amounts of people quickly and sustainably, but if sustainability is the goal, there’s a lot more that needs to be done. A typical 18 meter bus consumes approximately 40,000 litres of diesel every year, which equates to 100 tonnes of CO2 for just one bus. That’s where the electrification of public transit comes in - an initiative that Canada, and the city of Ottawa, has been fast-tracking. In this episode, Ottawa Mayor, Jim Watson, shares what’s next for Ottawa as city officials strive to achieve their ambitious goal for 100 per cent net zero public transit by 2040. Transcript: Dan Seguin  00:42 Welcome back, everyone. This is the ThinkEnergy podcast. Many guests of this podcast have spoken at length about the important role that the transportation sector has on helping Canada achieve 100% net zero emissions by 2050. Without widespread adoption of transit electrification. decarbonisation simply can't be done. And we're not just talking about personal electric vehicles, but long haul trucking, construction vehicles and of course, public transit. Public Transportation remains the only way to move large amounts of people quickly and sustainably. Only a few years ago, Clean Energy Canada and its partners released a report stating that the transportation sector was responsible for 23% of Canada's greenhouse emissions. It found that of more than 15 million Canadians that commuted only 12% use public transportation. Nearly 75% of commuters drove a private automobile only a few years ago, clean energy Canada and its partners released a report stating that the transportation sector was responsible for 23% of Canada's greenhouse emissions. It found that of the more than 15 million Canadians that commuted only 12% use public transportation, the electrification of public transit, paired with green energy production and increase ridership will improve urban air pollution immensely. Did you know that a typical 18 meter bus runs up to 16 hours a day, and that one bus that consumes approximately 40,000 litres of diesel every year. That's the equivalent of 100 tonnes of co2 for just one bus. Canada is in a great position with 80% of the electricity produced is coming from non-emitting sources. That means that when the electrification of transportation happens, it will be plugged into an already green grid that is only getting greener year over year. It was in April 2019 that the City of Ottawa declared a climate emergency and that it was ramping up work on key climate change plans and initiatives. In fact, the City of Ottawa has an ambitious goal to have its entire municipal operations and services including transit 100% net zero by 2040. That's a full decade before the country plans to achieve this goal. Ottawa has already made significant strides with its launch of the city's light rail transit. A feat that Ottawa Transit Commission says has achieved the largest reduction of GHG emissions in Ottawa's history and changes happening incrementally. By the fall of 2021, the city will add four more electric buses to its fleet. There's no doubt that there's a movement happening. More and more urban dwellers are jumping on E scooters and E bikes as other ways to navigate a congested city. I see everyday as my wife and I share an electric car. And most recently, instead of taking our car, we ride our ebikes for errands within five to 10 kilometers from our home. So here's today's big question is Canada's public transit entering a new era of decarbonisation, transitioning away from diesel buses to low or zero emission electric buses, electric rail, and other cleaner means of mobility? How quickly can we achieve this. And how are municipalities like Ottawa, leading the charge? To help drive the conversation, I've invited the mayor of Ottawa, Jim Watson, to talk about the municipal goals related to climate change, and specifically the electrification of the city's public transportation. Welcome, Mr. Mayor, and thank you so much for being on our show today.   Jim Watson  05:30 My pleasure. Thank you very much.   Dan Seguin  05:32 Mr. Mayor. If I'm not mistaken, you were elected as the youngest mayor, in Ottawa's history in 1997. For our listeners, not from Ottawa, perhaps you could tell us a bit about yourself? And what fueled your passion for public service these many years?   Jim Watson  05:54 Sure, well, thank you for the opportunity to be on your podcast. That's right. My claim to fame was that I was the youngest Mayor elect, I think I was 35 or 36. And I was first elected as a city councilor when I was 28, or 29. For the Capital ward. And I served two terms on on city council as a councilor. And prior to that, I worked as Director of Communications for the Speaker of the House of Commons, and Press Secretary for the speaker as well. So I came from the federal political side into the municipal side and loved every moment of it. It's been a real honor to serve. I served as the last elected mayor of the Old City before amalgamation. And then from there we went. I went off to become President and CEO of the Canadian Tourism Commission, which is a federal crown Corporation, it's now called Destination Canada. And I did that for I guess, about three years. And then politics, lured me back into its web and I became the MPP for Ottawa West Nepean for two terms, and had the honor of serving in three different cabinet portfolios, the last one being Municipal Affairs and housing, and then got back into municipal politics in 2010, and was reelected in 2014, and 2018. So I'm now on my, I guess, 13th year as Mayor of the City of Ottawa, Lucky 13. And as I said, I've enjoyed every moment of it, it's been a great honor. And also, particularly these days dealing with things like COVID and the state of the economy a great challenge.   Dan Seguin  07:28 Mayor Watson, let's go back to April 2019, when you declared a climate emergency in the nation's capital, was there an inciting incident or a trigger that led to that moment? Or was it simply a built up of evidence that all pointed to the same conclusion?   Jim Watson  07:50 I think it was a gradual realization that more and more countries and cities and provinces were recognizing climate change is a global crisis that we're dealing with, and that we at the local level, being the most pragmatic level of government had an opportunity to not just declare, but also act on the climate emergency because it's one thing to simply pass a paper resolution saying, you declare it, you're going to do something about it. And we've worked very hard over the course of the last not just a couple of months, but last couple of years with our staff and advisory groups and outside environmental experts to do whatever we can both locally and contributes nationally through the Federation of Canadian Municipalities to ensure that the senior levels of government that have the most influence when it comes to funding recognize that we need their help in order to meet our goals. So in Canada over 450 Municipal and regional governments have declared a climate emergency including big cities like ours, Montreal, Vancouver, Halifax, Toronto and Edmonton. And the assembly of First Nations has as well.   Dan Seguin  09:11 Okay. I've read that municipalities in Canada have influence over roughly 50% of greenhouse gas emissions in Canada. Through Ottawa's Energy Evolution initiative, you've set a goal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 100 per cent from all areas of municipal government operations by 2040. What does that mean and what kind of changes should residents expect to see over the next two decades?   Jim Watson  09:46 Our city operations account for only about 4% of total emissions in Ottawa so as you mentioned, council as a goal to reduce the admissions our target was to decrease them by 30% by 2025. And between 2012 and 2019, corporate admissions decreased by 34%. So we're actually making progress and we're doing a little better than we targeted for. And since the launch of LRT, diesel use and emissions for buses have decreased for the first time since 2012 - and that's something pretty significant. So we're gonna have to continue to do that good work. But when we talk about the corporation of the City of Ottawa, it's basically City Hall and, and the bureaucracy around the city. There's the broader City of Ottawa, obviously, and we have to work with them, the private sector and homebuilders and so on, to ensure that they meet their goals as well. But I'm very proud of the fact that , as I mentioned, for the first time, we've seen diesel use, emissions from buses decreased for the first time since 2012. So that's a good indicator of how we're doing.   Dan Seguin  10:52 I have to admit, Mayor, that I'm pretty excited to talk to you today about public transportation. I know you take public transit on a regular basis. Coming off a year, like 2020, where ridership was down due to COVID. What are the benefits residents should be aware of? And why is public transit important to invest in?   Jim Watson  11:18 Well, obviously, 2020 was a really tough year for every transit company around the world, not just Ottawa. Every transit system, at least in North America saw a significant you know, 60 to 80% drop in, in revenues and passengers for the simple reason that so many people were working from home, people lost their jobs as a result of COVID-19, people felt safer not going on transit. So all of those factors were front and center. And it made it rough for our transit system, particularly, since we just launched a new train system. And obviously, the first few months of that system, we had a lot of problems. Most of those have been resolved and the system's working really well, I think 98.5% of trips are on time, which is great. And, you know, the one good thing that's come out of COVID is the fact that transit ridership is down, that's a bad thing. And a good thing. The bad thing is it's we want to get the numbers up and make it financially sustainable. The good thing is people can take transit now and not be wedged into the train or the bus like sardines in a can because we have more space now because there's fewer riders. So we know that for instance, reducing greenhouse gases from transit, and the O train in particular is going to be one of our key tools in our toolbox to reduce our GHGs and make sure that we meet our standards, and meet our goals that we set as a community through the emergency resolution.   Dan Seguin  12:53 Mayor Watson, what investments are you looking to make in regards to the electrification of public transit in Ottawa? I understand we're getting four new electric buses by the fall of 2021. What are the short, mid and long term goals to electrify public transportation? When are you planning to have 100% electrification of the buses?   Jim Watson  13:24 Well, you know, some people have been critical over the fact that we're only getting, you know, a few buses in the first order. But I think what's wise on this on our staff's part is let's get a few in, let's test them and all of the different climates that we have, because as you know, we have four very distinct seasons. We're also unique and cities that were a very large geographic city - we're 2600 square kilometers, you can fit the cities of Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, Montreal, and Toronto, all five of those big cities fit within the boundaries of Ottawa, and we're still bigger. So, I don't believe we have the technology yet where a bus can travel those long distances in a city like Ottawa without having to get charged and, you know, you send a bus all the way out to Carp or to South End in Barrhaven or to Cumberland and Orleans. It takes a lot of wear and tear on the battery and we have to have the capacity to make sure that the buses don't stall out because the battery is run run dry. So we're investing you know, several million dollars to get the infrastructure in place working with our partner, Hydro Ottawa, as well as the bus manufacturer and OC Transpo. To get these buses up and running so people can see them can experience them and we can test them out in the fall weather as well as in the winter weather coming up in the next year. But you know, the big, just going back to other aspects of transit, of course we have the O-train and you know, the LRT has to go and be expanded farther than it is right now. Right now it's 12 kilometers with I guess about 13 stations going from Tunney's Pasture in the East, Hurdman in the south end and Blair in the East End. And as you know, phase two of LRT is under construction as we speak. And it goes farther west to Algonquin College and Moody drive, just on the border of Kanata, and then it goes East to Trim road and Place D'Orleans. And it goes south to the EY center, the airport, and Riverside South, which is a very fast growing community. So those that's underway, and then this council is also approved the environmental assessments for Barrhaven's. LRT. Because Barrhaven is a very fast growing community, as you know, as well as Stittsville in Kanata. So we're working with the federal government: we need to secure the funding for phase three, we have the funding all in place, and it's being put to good use as we speak for phase two. But we need to go farther east west and south to make the system even more attractive and efficient.   Dan Seguin  16:08 So Mayor Watson, it's fair to say that the wide range of Ottawa's weather will play a factor on the feasibility of moving to electric?   Jim Watson  16:20 Well, I think we have to take that into account, you know, we have some really cold winters, and we want to make sure that the buses don't stall out, the last thing we want is a bus stranded on the side of the 174, the 417. Because the battery is not working properly. So we have to test them out, that would be the wise thing to do. You don't go and buy your whole fleet overnight without testing it and doing it the proper due diligence to make sure it works well. And you know, just as we're anticipating significant reductions in GHGs. From the O-train, we'll do the same from the buses, just give you an example by 2031 O-train reduction of greenhouse gas emissions will amount to about 94,000 tons and criteria air contaminant emissions by approximately 4600 tonnes. So it's a lot it's our single biggest weapon in our arsenal to fight climate change and to push down our GHG numbers is electrifying the system, as well as eventually, you know, my goal would be to have the entire OC transpo fleet if it's technically feasible to be electric over the next couple of decades.   Dan Seguin  17:35 I'm looking forward to your response on this next one Mayor Watson. Nationwide, cities are grappling with how to best reduce transportation emissions, better public health and lower government spending. Will the electrification of city fleets present an attractive proposition that has the potential to address all three concerns? What are the benefits that you hope Ottawa will reap from going electric and funding these types of projects?   Jim Watson  18:14 Well, you know, Dan that Ottawa already has good air quality. Going to zero emissions, transit will obviously improve it further. And quieter transit also improves the experience for those living and working on the routes. You know, if you look at Slater and Albert street that used to be a major transit way, lots of emissions. No one could ever have a cafe or patio on Slater/Albert, just because there are too many fumes coming from the buses, and the noise, quite frankly, of the engine. So that's going to improve the quality of life of people who live along bus routes as well. We know that battery electric buses do have a high upfront costs. So the more cities and governments around the world started investing in it, the price starts to go down, which makes it more economically feasible. But you know, as many of us found out during the pandemic, increasing our use of active transportation modes, like cycling and walking also has a positive impact on our physical and mental health. You know, more people are out at skating rinks now, for instance, than I've seen in some time. So, you know, we have still a lot of work to do. But this is the first time City Council in the history of the city of Ottawa has invested in electric buses. And obviously the first time we've invested in electric trains, I guess you could go back to the streetcars that were electric back a long time ago before you and I were born.   Dan Seguin  19:40 Now, can you help me understand what will determine the success of transit bus systems in North America? Could it be around promoting transit buses as an environmentally friendly, convenient and economical mode of transport? And what about our case: light rail transit, if it expands, can environmentalists or doing the right thing help bring more ridership and encourage a switch from personal to public transportation?   Jim Watson  20:15 Yeah, it's a very good question. I think it's a little of everything that you mentioned, I think it has to first and foremost be convenient for people. People don't want to be waiting for, you know, 50 or 60 minutes between trains or buses, it has to be comfortable and safe and secure for them. And it has to be affordable. You know, we froze the rates for most of last year, because we're not satisfied with the level of service that we're getting from RTG. And we try to keep the the rate going up at a roughly the rate of inflation, for passes and so on, we introduced the equi-pass for those people who have an income of less than I believe $20,000. So that makes it much more affordable for them, they save almost 50% off of regular adult pass, we brought in, you know, no charge service for seniors on Sundays, in addition to what we already offer on Wednesdays. And obviously, from an environmental point of view, that is another key selling point, I think, to a segment of our society that want to be good stewards of the environment. They want to make sure that, you know, they're getting on a vehicle and it's, you know, zero as close to zero emissions as possible.   Dan Seguin  21:27 Mr. Mayor, the transportation sector accounts for approximately a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions, and is one of the major sectors where emissions are still rising. Ottawa is closer to 44% if I'm not mistaken, electrification is widely considered an attractive solution for reducing the dependency and environmental impact of road transportation. Where does the city stand with EV infrastructure like public charging stations? And maybe let's throw in some wildcards like electric scooters and E-bikes?   Jim Watson  22:11 Yeah, the corporate policy with respect to EVcharging is requires charging stations be installed at new facilities that are undergoing major retrofits or if it's a new facility, EV chargers have to be part of that. So that's a policy that we instituted a little while ago, we have a charger here, for instance, at City Hall and you see them at some of the new recreation centers that we've built around the city. Energy Evolution doesn't discuss electric scooters, or ebikes. That's going to be part of the transportation master plan. We did have an E-scooter program with three companies on a pilot basis this past summer, we're waiting on the results of that. A lot of people love the system. There are other people that were not happy with those scooters, you know, being thrown and tossed across sidewalks, it was an impairment issue for people who had physical and visual disabilities. So we have to, obviously take that into account if we're going to make the program permanent. But you know, we see examples around the world and sometimes you don't have to reinvent the wheel. If the scooter program works. That's another mode of transportation that it's suitable for some people, but we want to make sure obviously, it's safe for everyone the scooter riders themselves as well as the people who use the sidewalks and the roadways for either cycling or walking.   Dan Seguin  23:37 We know that zero emission fleets tend to have higher upfront costs than comparable internal combustion engine vehicles. But the fueling and operating costs are lower over the lifetime of the vehicle, which can offset the higher sticker price. So will constituents in Ottawa see the cost savings from electric municipal fleets? And what about infrastructure for their own personal electric vehicles?   Jim Watson  24:12 Yeah, we're not planning on subsidizing home EV chargers. That's not part of our plan. I don't think people would would expect us to do that. Our main focus is public EV charging stations, such as right of way and community centers. I know, for instance, national Natural Resources Canada, the Federal Department have a project underway to install 24 on street chargers and at 12 sites across the city, which we appreciate. We're also funding to install three charging stations at the bottom of quarry Rec Center in Orleans. And this project is currently underway. And I think when residents will see the cost savings when switching obviously to electric vehicles. Electric vehicle drivers save upwards of 60% on maintenance costs. And obviously 50% on fuel costs, gasoline, and above and beyond it being a good deal financially, it's a great deal from our mental and ecological point of view.   Dan Seguin  25:04 Mayor Watson, as charging demand for fleet grows, the city will need more efficient and scalable charging systems. Where do you stand with the electric charging infrastructure to serve this mass electrification of transportation?   Jim Watson  25:24 Well, you know, we're lucky, we have a Member of Parliament, who's also a minister of infrastructure, Catherine McKenna, and Catherine is, is worked very hard to help us with some of these projects, particularly when she was minister the environment. So we're hoping to see increased support for both electric buses and electric charging stations from the federal government to help us because obviously, at our level of government were of the three levels were the poorest of the three and we need from time to time help from upper levels of government. And this is a great project that's very tangible, understandable by the public, to ensure that as more and more electric cars are sold, we're going to need more and more electric charging stations. And I just saw on the news the other day, that, fortunately for them, I think Norway now sold more electric cars than conventional gas cars for the first time in any country's history in the world, which I think is great for them, and something we should aim for.   Dan Seguin  26:32 Time for the crystal ball. Mr. Mayor, what is your ideal future for the electrification of public transportation, especially when it comes to reducing congestion and improving driver and rider experience?   Jim Watson  26:50 I think, you know, first and foremost, it's getting phase two up and running: getting more people on the train system and the bus system that plugs into the train system. The first phase of phase two will open in the fall of 2022, which is not that far away. That's the the existing O-train diesel line, not the electric line. But then the Confederation line, which is east-west. The next phase, I think, will be in 2025, I believe, for the East End and 2026 for the West End, around those times. So that's my preoccupation, and focus is to get that done. And then to secure the funding for phase three, which will bring us to Barrhaven and Stittsville and Kanata. And then if you can call it phase four, how do we work with Gatineau to get some kind of connectivity between their new tram system that they're working on? And our LRT system in the downtown core? Because we have so many people that work in Gatineau and live in Ottawa and vice versa.   Dan Seguin  27:58 Okay, are you ready to close this off with some rapid fire questions?   Jim Watson  28:03 Sure.It sounds like reach for the top.   Dan Seguin  28:06 Mr. Mayor, what is your favorite word?   Jim Watson  28:10 "thanks." We don't do that enough.   Dan Seguin  28:20 What is your ideal electric vision for Ottawa's future?   Jim Watson  28:25 Well, that we continue our progress on LRT, electrification of the system, and obviously, the bus fleet and our own corporate fleet here at the city are 100% Electric.   Dan Seguin  28:40 What is the one thing you can't live without?   Jim Watson  28:44 Water - I drink a lot of water. And I need you need to as well.   Dan Seguin  28:49 What habit or hobby have you picked up during shelter in place?   Jim Watson  28:53 Oh, probably, you know, being attached to Netflix - watching a lot of really bad movies to pass the time.   Dan Seguin  29:04 If you could have one superpower, what would it be?   Jim Watson  29:08 I guess to bring people back to life.   Dan Seguin  29:11 Okay, if you could turn back time and talk to your 18 year old self, what would you tell him?   Jim Watson  29:18 Probably go to law school so I have something to fall back on and not rely just on politics because there's no job security.   Dan Seguin  29:24 And lastly, what do you currently find most interesting about public life?   Jim Watson  29:33 There's a lot of good in the community it's often overshadowed by the negativity and and social media tends to be a pretty negative medium for people to attack one another but I see a lot of the good side of the city of Ottawa you know, neighbor helping neighbor, stranger helping stranger whether it's during the flooding or the tornado or COVID-19 there's a lot of good in the world unfortunately gets overshadowed by some of the negativity that you see in the media.   Dan Seguin  30:05 Well, Mr. Mayor, we've reached the end of another episode of The ThinkEnergy podcast. Thank you so much for joining us today. It was a pleasure.   Jim Watson  30:15 Thank you very much that it's been an honor. Appreciate the offer. Take care.   Dan Seguin  30:22 Thank you for joining us today. I truly hope you enjoyed this episode of The ThinkEnergy podcast. For past episodes, make sure you visit our website hydroottawa.com/podcast. Lastly, if you found value in this podcast, be sure to subscribe. Anyway, this podcast is a wrap. Cheers, everyone. -------------------------------------------------------------- Épisode no 46 – Accélération du transport en commun électrique Résumé de l’épisode : Le transport en commun demeure un des seuls moyens de déplacer de grands nombres de personnes de façon rapide et durable, mais si la durabilité est l’objectif, il y a beaucoup à faire en ce sens. Un autobus de 18 mètres consomme environ 40 000 litres de diesel par année, ce qui équivaut à 100 tonnes de CO2 juste pour un autobus. C’est là qu’entre en jeu l’électrification du transport en commun, une initiative que le Canada – et la Ville d’Ottawa – s’efforcent d’accélérer. Dans cet épisode, Jim Watson, maire d’Ottawa, discute de ce qui s’en vient à Ottawa alors que l’administration municipale s’efforce d’atteindre son ambitieux objectif : un réseau de transport en commun à consommation énergétique 100 % nette zéro d’ici 2040. Transcription : Dan Séguin  00:42 Bonjour tout le monde et bienvenue au balado ThinkEnergy. De nombreux invités de ce balado nous ont parlé en long et en large de l’importance du rôle du secteur des transports dans la quête du Canada d’atteindre la carboneutralité d’ici 2050. Sans l’adoption à grande échelle de véhicules électriques, la décarbonation ne sera tout simplement pas possible. Et on ne parle pas seulement des véhicules électriques personnels, mais aussi du camionnage sur longue distance, des véhicules de construction et, bien entendu, des réseaux de transport en commun. Le transport en commun est le seul moyen de déplacer de grands nombres de personnes de façon rapide et durable. Il y a quelques années à peine, le programme Clean Energy Canada et ses partenaires ont publié un rapport qui révélait que le secteur des transports était responsable de 23 % des émissions de gaz à effet de serre (GES) au Canada. Le rapport révélait aussi que sur les quelque 15 millions de Canadiens qui se déplacent pour aller au travail, seulement 12 % empruntaient le transport en commun. Près de 75 % des usagers de la route conduisaient un véhicule personnel. L’électrification des transports en commun, alliée à la production d’énergie verte et à l’augmentation du nombre d’usagers contribueront toutes immensément à l’amélioration de la pollution de l’air dans les villes. Saviez-vous qu’un autobus de 18 mètres roule jusqu’à 16 heures par jour et qu’un seul de ces autobus consomme environ 40 000 litres de diesel par année? C’est l’équivalent de 100 tonnes de CO2 pour un seul autobus. Le Canada est dans une excellente position puisque 80 % de l’électricité qu’on y produit provient de sources non émettrices. Cela signifie que lorsque les transports seront électrifiés, ils pourront compter sur un réseau d’électricité déjà vert – et qui le devient toujours plus au fil des ans. En avril 2019, la Ville d’Ottawa a déclaré l’état d’urgence climatique et a annoncé dans la même foulée qu’elle accélérait les travaux liés aux plans et aux projets clés pour lutter contre les changements climatiques. D’ailleurs, la Ville d’Ottawa a un objectif très ambitieux : la réduction des émissions de GES de 100 % d’ici 2040, et ce, pour toutes ses activités et services municipaux, y compris le transport en commun. C’est 10 ans de moins que l’objectif fixé par le Canada pour atteindre le « zéro émission ». Ottawa a déjà fait de grands pas avec le lancement du train léger sur rail (TLR) de la ville. Selon la Commission du transport en commun d’Ottawa, le TLR a donné lieu à la plus importante réduction de GES de l’histoire d’Ottawa et, pourtant, les changements surviennent progressivement. D’ici l’automne 2021, la Ville ajoutera quatre autobus électriques à son parc de véhicules. Il ne fait aucun doute qu’un mouvement est en train de se préciser. De plus en plus de citadins se déplacent sur des scooters électriques et sur des vélos électriques pour éviter les écueils de la congestion de la ville. Je constate ce mouvement tous les jours alors que ma conjointe et moi-même partageons une voiture électrique. Et tout récemment, au lieu de prendre notre voiture, nous avons pris nos vélos électriques pour faire nos emplettes dans un rayon de cinq à 10 kilomètres de chez nous. Alors, voici la grande question du jour : est-ce que les réseaux de transport en commun du Canada sont en train d’entrer dans une nouvelle ère de décarbonation, en délaissant les autobus au diesel au profit d’autobus électriques et de trains électriques à faible ou zéro émission, ou encore d’autres modes de déplacement plus propres? À quel rythme pouvons-nous effectuer cette transition? Et comment les municipalités comme Ottawa mènent-elles la charge? Pour alimenter la conversation, j’ai invité le maire d’Ottawa, Jim Watson, pour discuter des objectifs de la municipalité au chapitre des changements climatiques et, particulièrement, de l’électrification du transport en commun de la ville. Monsieur le Maire, bienvenue et merci d’avoir accepté de participer à notre émission aujourd’hui.   Jim Watson  05:30 Le plaisir est pour moi. Merci beaucoup.   Dan Séguin  05:32 Monsieur le Maire, si je ne me trompe pas, lors de votre élection en 1997, vous êtes devenu le plus jeune maire de l’histoire d’Ottawa. Pour nos auditeurs de l’extérieur d’Ottawa, peut-être pourriez-vous nous parler un peu de vous? Et de ce qui alimente votre passion pour la fonction publique depuis toutes ces années?   Jim Watson  05:54 Bien sûr et merci de me donner l’occasion de participer à votre balado. Vous avez raison. À mon élection en effet, je suis devenu le plus jeune maire, je pense que j’avais 35 ou 36 ans. J’avais précédemment été élu comme conseiller municipal à l’âge de 28 ou 29 ans, pour le quartier Capitale. Et j’ai fait deux mandats au conseil municipal à titre de conseiller. Auparavant, j’ai travaillé comme directeur des communications pour le président de la Chambre des communes, et aussi comme attaché de presse. J’ai donc fait le saut du fédéral au municipal, et j’ai adoré chaque instant. C’est un véritable honneur de pouvoir servir la population. J’ai servi à titre de dernier maire élu de l’ancienne ville, avant la fusion. Et là, les choses se sont succédé. Je suis devenu président-directeur général de la Commission canadienne du tourisme, qui est une société d’État et qui s’appelle aujourd’hui Destination Canada. J’ai occupé ce poste environ trois ans. Ensuite, la politique m’a repris dans ses filets, et j’ai été député provincial durant deux mandats pour Ottawa-Ouest—Nepean. J’ai eu l’honneur de diriger trois portefeuilles différents, le dernier étant les Affaires municipales et le Logement. Je suis revenu en politique municipale en 2010 et j’ai été réélu en 2014 et en 2018. J’en suis maintenant à ma 13e année, je pense, comme maire de la Ville d’Ottawa. Treize ans, un chiffre chanceux je suppose. Et comme je l’ai dit, chaque journée me passionne, c’est un grand honneur. Et particulièrement par les temps qui courent, avec la COVID et la situation économique. Ce sont de grands défis.   Dan Séguin  07:28 Monsieur le Maire Watson, revenons à avril 2019, lorsque vous avez déclaré l’état d’urgence climatique dans la capitale nationale. Est-ce qu’il y a eu un incident particulier ou un élément déclencheur qui vous a poussé à faire cette déclaration? Ou était-ce simplement une accumulation de preuves qui pointaient toutes vers la même conclusion?   Jim Watson  07:50 Je pense qu’on a graduellement réalisé que de plus en plus de pays, de villes et de provinces reconnaissent que les changements climatiques sont une crise mondiale dont il faut vite s’occuper. Et nous, au palier municipal, comme nous sommes le palier de gouvernement le plus pragmatique, nous avions l’occasion non seulement de déclarer l’état d’urgence, mais aussi d’agir concrètement pour l’urgence climatique. C’est une chose d’adopter une résolution sur papier, mais en déclarant l’état d’urgence, il faut passer aux actes. Nous travaillons très fort depuis une couple d’années avec notre personnel, des groupes consultatifs et des experts indépendants en environnement pour faire tout ce que nous pouvons à l’échelle régionale. Nous contribuons aussi à l’échelle nationale par l’entremise de la Fédération canadienne des municipalités pour nous assurer que les instances supérieures du gouvernement, qui ont le plus d’influence en matière de financement, reconnaissent que nous avons besoin de leur aide pour atteindre nos objectifs. Ainsi, au Canada, plus de 450 administrations publiques municipales et régionales ont déclaré l’état d’urgence climatique, y compris de grandes villes comme la nôtre, Montréal, Vancouver, Halifax, Toronto et Edmonton. L’Assemblée des Premières Nations l’a également fait. Dan Séguin  09:11 D'accord. J’ai lu que les municipalités du Canada ont une influence sur environ 50 % des émissions de gaz à effet de serre au pays. Avec le plan d’action Évolution énergétique, vous avez pour objectif de réduire de 100 % les émissions de gaz à effet de serre dans tous les aspects des activités municipales d’ici 2040. Qu’est-ce que ça signifie concrètement et à quels changements les citoyens doivent s’attendre au cours des deux prochaines décennies?   Jim Watson  09:46 Les activités municipales représentent environ 4 % seulement du total des émissions à Ottawa. Alors, comme vous l’avez mentionné, le conseil a pour objectif de réduire les émissions, et notre cible était de les réduire de 30 % d’ici 2025. Mais entre 2012 et 2019, les émissions municipales ont diminué de 34 %. Alors, nous faisons réellement des progrès, et les résultats sont un peu mieux par rapport à l’objectif fixé. Et depuis le lancement du train léger sur rail, la consommation de diesel et les émissions des autobus ont diminué pour la première fois depuis 2012 – et ça, c’est quelque chose de considérable. Nous allons donc continuer à faire ce bon travail. Mais lorsqu’on parle de la corporation de la Ville d’Ottawa, c’est principalement l’hôtel de ville et la bureaucratie autour de la ville. Cependant, il y a aussi la ville d’Ottawa au sens plus large, évidemment, et nous devons travailler avec eux – le secteur privé, les constructeurs résidentiels, etc. – pour nous assurer qu’ils atteignent eux aussi leurs objectifs. Mais je suis très fier du fait, comme je l’ai déjà dit, que nous ayons vu la consommation de diesel et les émissions des autobus diminuer pour la première fois depuis 2012. C’est un bon indicateur de notre performance.   Dan Séguin  10:52 Je dois admettre, Monsieur le Maire, que je suis très content de discuter avec vous aujourd’hui du transport en commun. Je sais que vous êtes un usager régulier. Mais après une année comme 2020, où l’achalandage a diminué en raison de la COVID, quels sont les avantages que les résidents devraient connaître? Et pourquoi est-il important d’investir dans le transport en commun?   Jim Watson  11:18 Eh bien, évidemment, 2020 a été une année très difficile pour toutes les sociétés de transport en commun, pas seulement à Ottawa, mais partout dans le monde. Chaque réseau de transport en commun, du moins en Amérique du Nord, a accusé une baisse considérable – entre 60 % et 80 % - des revenus et des usagers. La raison est simple : tellement de gens faisaient du télétravail, d’autres ont perdu leur emploi à cause de la COVID-19, et les gens se sentaient plus en sécurité en n’empruntant pas le transport en commun. Tous ces facteurs ont contribué à la baisse d’achalandage. Et ç’a été dur pour notre réseau de transport en commun, surtout que nous venions tout juste de lancer le train léger sur rail. Et bien sûr, les premiers mois du train léger, on a connu beaucoup de problèmes. La plupart de ces problèmes ont été réglés, et le réseau fonctionne vraiment bien. À ma connaissance, 98,5 % des trajets sont à l’heure, ce qui est excellent. Vous savez, ce qui ressort de la COVID, c’est que l’achalandage a diminué. C’est à la fois une bonne et une mauvaise nouvelle. Le côté négatif, c’est que nous aimerions que les chiffres augmentent pour la viabilité du réseau. Le côté positif, c’est que les gens peuvent maintenant utiliser le transport en commun sans être entassés comme des sardines dans le train ou l’autobus. Il y a plus de place aujourd’hui parce qu’il y a moins d’usagers. Alors, nous savons que la réduction des gaz à effet de serre générés par le transport en commun – et par l’O-Train en particulier – va être un outil très important pour réduire nos émissions de gaz à effet de serre et pour nous assurer d’atteindre les standards et les objectifs que nous avons établis, en tant que collectivité, dans le cadre de notre déclaration d’état d’urgence.   Dan Séguin  12:53 Monsieur le Maire, quels sont les investissements que vous envisagez de faire sur le plan de l’électrification du transport en commun à Ottawa? Je sais que nous allons recevoir quatre nouveaux autobus électriques d’ici l’automne 2021. Mais quels sont les objectifs à court, moyen et long terme pour l’électrification du transport en commun? À quel moment les autobus seront-ils électriques à 100 %?    Jim Watson  13:24 Eh bien, vous savez, certaines personnes critiquent le fait qu’on reçoive seulement quelques autobus avec notre première commande. Mais je pense que c’est sage de procéder comme ça. On se dit allez, on en reçoit quelques-uns, on les teste dans toutes les conditions climatiques qu’on a chez nous, car comme vous le savez, on a quatre saisons bien distinctes ici. Ottawa est également unique par la grande étendue de son territoire géographique, qui totalise 2 600 kilomètres carrés. Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, Montréal et Toronto : ces cinq grandes villes pourraient toutes occuper le territoire d’Ottawa, et il resterait encore de la place. Alors, je ne crois pas qu’on dispose encore de la technologie nécessaire pour faire rouler un autobus électrique sur de grandes distances, dans une ville comme Ottawa, sans devoir le recharger à un moment donné. Voyez-vous, si on envoie un autobus jusqu’à Carp ou à Barrhaven-Sud ou jusqu’à Cumberland et Orléans, c’est très exigeant pour la batterie, et on doit s’assurer que l’autobus ne tombe pas en panne à cause d’une batterie à plat. Nous investissons donc plusieurs millions de dollars pour mettre en place l’infrastructure nécessaire avec notre partenaire, Hydro Ottawa, ainsi qu’avec le fabricant des autobus et OC Transpo. Pour que ces autobus puissent circuler et que les usagers puissent les essayer, il faut qu’on puisse les tester. Et cela se fera au cours des mois à venir, dans les conditions automnales, puis dans les conditions hivernales. Par ailleurs, il y a d’autres composantes de notre réseau de transport en commun : évidemment, nous avons l’O-Train, et vous savez que le train léger sera prolongé encore davantage. En ce moment, il fait 12 kilomètres et comprend environ 13 stations, qui vont de Tunney’s Pasture à l’est, à Hurdman au sud et à Blair à l’est. Et comme vous le savez, l’Étape 2 du train léger est présentement en construction. Avec le prolongement, le train ira plus loin à l’ouest jusqu’au Collège Algonquin et à la promenade Moody, juste aux limites de Kanata. Il se rendra aussi vers l’est jusqu’au chemin Trim et Place d’Orléans. Finalement, il se rendra vers le sud jusqu’au Centre EY, l’aéroport et Riverside Sud, une collectivité qui connaît une forte croissance. Ce sont les prolongements qui sont en cours de réalisation, et le conseil a également approuvé les évaluations environnementales pour le trajet jusqu’à Barrhaven. Car Barrhaven est en forte croissance, comme vous le savez, tout comme Stittsville à Kanata. Nous travaillons actuellement avec le gouvernement fédéral : il nous faut obtenir du financement pour l’Étape 3. Pour l’Étape 2, nous avons tout le financement nécessaire et il est utilisé à très bon escient. Mais nous devons nous rendre encore plus loin, à l’est, à l’ouest et au sud, pour que le réseau soit plus attrayant et plus efficace.   Dan Séguin  16:08 Alors, Monsieur le Maire, est-il juste de dire que les conditions climatiques très variées d’Ottawa vont être un facteur pour la faisabilité de l’électrification du transport en commun?   Jim Watson  16:20 Eh bien, je pense qu’il faut qu’on en tienne compte, il peut faire très froid l’hiver ici, et nous tenons à nous assurer que les autobus ne tombent pas en panne. Imaginez si un autobus se retrouve immobilisé sur l’accotement de la 174 ou de la 417 parce que la batterie ne fonctionne pas comme elle devrait. Alors, il faut qu’on teste les autobus, c’est la chose sensée à faire. Ce serait impensable d’acheter un parc complet d’autobus, du jour au lendemain, sans les avoir mis à l’essai et sans avoir la certitude qu’ils fonctionnent bien. Vous savez, nous prévoyons des réductions considérables de GES grâce à l’O-Train, mais nous obtiendrons aussi des réductions grâce aux autobus. Juste pour vous donner un exemple, d’ici 2031, la réduction des émissions de gaz à effet de serre de l’O-Train totalisera environ 94 000 tonnes, et les émissions des principaux contaminants atmosphériques seront réduites d’environ 4 600 tonnes. La meilleure arme que nous avons dans notre arsenal pour lutter contre les changements climatiques et pour réduire nos émissions de GES, c’est l’électrification du réseau. Éventuellement, mon but serait que le parc tout entier d’OC Transpo devienne électrique au cours des deux prochaines décennies, si c’est techniquement faisable.   Dan Séguin  17:35 J’ai hâte d’entendre votre réponse à ma prochaine question Monsieur Watson. D’un bout à l’autre du pays, les villes sont aux prises avec les enjeux suivants : comment réduire les émissions générées par les transports, comment améliorer la santé de la population et comment diminuer les dépenses municipales. Est-ce que l’électrification du parc automobile des municipalités représente une option intéressante, qui a le potentiel de couvrir les trois enjeux? Quels sont les avantages dont vous espérez qu’Ottawa bénéficie en faisant le saut vers l’électrification et en finançant des projets de ce type?   Jim Watson  18:14 Comme vous le savez peut-être Dan, la qualité de l’air est bonne à Ottawa. En contribuant à atteindre le « zéro émission », le transport en commun l’améliorera encore davantage. Sans oublier qu’un réseau de transport en commun plus silencieux rehaussera l’expérience des gens qui vivent et qui travaillent à proximité des trajets. Si on pense aux rues Slater et Albert, à fort achalandage : ça fait beaucoup d’émissions. Personne n’aurait jamais imaginé exploiter une terrasse de café sur Slater ou Albert en raison de la grande quantité d’émanations s’échappant des autobus. Et honnêtement, que dire du bruit des moteurs! C’est un autre aspect qui va améliorer la qualité de vie des gens qui vivent à proximité des trajets. Nous savons que les autobus électriques à batterie ont un coût initial élevé. Mais plus des villes et des administrations municipales du monde investiront dans ces véhicules, leur prix commencera à baisser, ce qui rendra leur acquisition plus faisable. Mais vous savez, comme de nombreuses personnes l’ont réalisé durant la pandémie, le recourt plus important aux modes de transport actifs – comme le vélo et la marche – a aussi des effets positifs sur la santé physique et mentale. On le constate, les gens sont plus nombreux à aller patiner, par exemple, qu’ils l’étaient auparavant. Mais voyez-vous, on a encore beaucoup de travail à faire. C’est la toute première fois que le conseil municipal, dans l’histoire de la Ville d’Ottawa, investit dans des autobus électriques. Et, évidemment, c’est la première fois qu’on investit dans des trains électriques. À moins qu’on tienne compte du tramway, qui était électrique, mais son histoire remonte à tellement longtemps, avant même votre naissance ou la mienne…   Dan Séguin  19:40 Maintenant, pouvez-vous m’aider à comprendre ce qui déterminera le succès des réseaux d’autobus de transport en commun en Amérique du Nord? Est-ce que ce serait en faisant la promotion de ces autobus comme étant un mode de transport écologique, pratique et économique? Et qu’en est-il de notre cas : le train léger sur rail. Si ses trajets se prolongent, est-ce que les environnementalistes ou simplement la bonne conscience collective pourraient aider à accroître l’achalandage et réduire l’utilisation des véhicules personnels?   Jim Watson  20:15 Oui, c’est une très bonne question. Je crois que le succès repose un peu sur tous les éléments que vous avez mentionnés, mais je pense aussi que ce mode de transport doit, d’abord et avant tout, être pratique pour les gens. Les gens ne veulent pas attendre, disons 50 ou 60 minutes entre chaque train ou chaque autobus. Les véhicules doivent aussi être confortables et sécuritaires pour les usagers. Et le prix doit être abordable. Vous savez, nous avons gelé les tarifs pour la majeure partie de l’année dernière parce que nous ne sommes pas satisfaits du service que nous recevons du Groupe de transport Rideau (GTR). Nous nous efforçons de limiter la hausse du tarif des laissez-passer en fonction du taux d’inflation. De plus, nous avons lancé l’EquiPass pour les usagers dont le revenu est de moins de 20 000 $, si je ne me trompe pas. Pour ces usagers, l’accès au transport en commun est beaucoup plus abordable : ils économisent près de 50 % par rapport au tarif courant du laissez-passer pour adulte. Par ailleurs, nous avons lancé un service sans frais le dimanche pour les aînés, en plus de ce que nous offrons déjà le mercredi. Et bien entendu, d’un point de vue environnemental, c’est un autre argument de vente clé, à mon avis, pour une partie de la population qui tient à protéger l’environnement. Ces citoyens tiennent à ce que le véhicule dans lequel ils se déplacent soit le plus près possible du « zéro émission ».   Dan Séguin  21:27 Monsieur le Maire, le secteur des transports est responsable du quart environ des émissions de gaz à effet de serre du monde entier. C’est aussi l’un des grands secteurs où les émissions continuent d’augmenter. Si je ne me trompe pas, Ottawa est plus près de 44 %. L’électrification est grandement considérée comme une belle solution pour réduire la dépendance au transport routier et ses répercussions sur l’environnement. Quelle est la position de la Ville sur le plan des infrastructures pour les véhicules électriques, notamment les bornes de recharge publiques? Et qu’en est-il du potentiel des scooters électriques et des vélos électriques?   Jim Watson  22:11 En ce qui concerne la recharge des VE, notre politique exige que des bornes de recharge soient installées aux immeubles auxquels sont apportées d’importantes mises à niveau. Dans le cas des immeubles neufs, les bornes de recharge doivent faire partie des plans de conception. C’est une politique que nous avons adoptée il y a quelque temps déjà. Par exemple, nous avons une borne de recharge, ici à l’hôtel de ville, et on en voit à certains des nouveaux centres récréatifs que nous avons construits à différents endroits de la ville. Le plan d’action Évolution énergétique ne porte pas sur les scooters électriques ou les vélos électriques. Par contre, ces petits véhicules vont faire partie du plan directeur des transports. On avait d’ailleurs un programme de scooters électriques avec trois entreprises l’été dernier, en guise de projet pilote, et nous attendons les résultats. Beaucoup de gens ont adoré le système. Par contre, d’autres ont été mécontents parce que les scooters étaient souvent malencontreusement abandonnés sur les trottoirs et qu’ils représentaient des risques pour les personnes ayant un handicap physique ou visuel. Si nous décidons de rendre ce programme permanent, il va falloir tenir compte de ces aspects. Mais vous savez, on voit des exemples aux quatre coins du monde et, parfois, il est inutile de réinventer la roue. Si le programme de scooters fonctionne, il deviendra un autre mode de transport approprié pour certaines personnes. Mais évidemment, nous voulons la sécurité avant tout : celle des usagers des scooters et celle des gens qui empruntent les trottoirs et les rues à vélo ou à pied.   Dan Séguin  23:37 Nous savons que les véhicules « zéro émission » des parcs automobiles municipaux ont généralement un coût initial plus élevé comparativement aux véhicules à moteur à combustion interne. Mais les économies de carburant et de fonctionnement qui sont réalisées au cours de la vie utile du véhicule peuvent compenser le prix d’achat plus élevé. Est-ce que les citoyens d’Ottawa peuvent s’attendre à voir l’effet des économies de coût découlant des véhicules électriques municipaux? Et qu’en est-il de l’infrastructure adaptée à leurs propres véhicules électriques?   Jim Watson  24:12 Eh bien, nous ne prévoyons pas subventionner les bornes de recharge pour VE résidentielles. Cela ne fait pas partie de nos plans. Je ne pense pas non plus que les gens s’attendent à ce que nous le fassions. Nous préférons nous concentrer principalement sur les bornes de recharge publiques, par exemple aux centres communautaires. Je sais, entre autres, que Ressources naturelles Canada – le ministère fédéral – a commencé un projet consistant à installer 24 bornes de recharge « sur rue » et à 12 sites à travers la ville, ce que nous apprécions. Nous avons également dégagé des fonds pour l’installation de trois bornes de recharge au Complexe récréatif Bob-MacQuarrie, à Orléans. Ce projet est d’ailleurs déjà en cours. Je pense que les résidents verront réellement des économies de coût lorsqu’ils opteront pour un véhicule électrique. Les conducteurs de véhicules électriques économisent jusqu’à 60 % en frais d’entretien et, évidemment, 50 % en frais de carburant. Un véhicule électrique est bien plus qu’une bonne affaire sur le plan financier, c’est une excellente affaire d’un point de vue intellectuel et écologique.   Dan Séguin  25:04 Monsieur le Maire, au fur et à mesure que les besoins de recharge vont augmenter pour les véhicules municipaux, la Ville devra pouvoir compter sur des systèmes de recharge plus efficaces et évolutifs. Qu’elle est votre position quant à l’infrastructure de recharge électrique requise dans le cadre de l’électrification massive du secteur des transports?   Jim Watson  25:24 Eh bien, vous savez, nous avons de la chance. Nous avons une députée, Catherine McKenna, qui est aussi ministre de l’Infrastructure. Catherine travaille très fort pour nous aider avec certains de ces projets, particulièrement lorsqu’elle était ministre de l’Environnement. Alors, nous espérons obtenir davantage de soutien du gouvernement fédéral, tant pour les autobus électriques que pour les bornes de recharge. Car de toute évidence, des trois paliers de gouvernement, c’est le nôtre qui est le plus pauvre et, de temps à autre, nous avons besoin d’aide des paliers de gouvernement supérieurs. Il s’agit d’un excellent projet, très tangible et facile à comprendre pour la population : pour que de plus en plus de véhicules électriques soient vendus, il nous faut de plus en plus de bornes de recharge. J’ai vu l’autre jour aux nouvelles qu’en Norvège, il se vend maintenant plus de véhicules électriques que de voitures conventionnelles à essence. C’est le tout premier pays du monde où ça se produit, c’est super pour eux et c’est quelque chose que nous devrions avoir comme but.   Dan Séguin  26:32 Bon, c’est le moment de la boule de cristal. Monsieur le Maire, quel avenir idéal voyez-vous pour l’électrification du transport en commun, particulièrement au chapitre de la diminution de la congestion et de l’amélioration de l’expérience vécue par les automobilistes et les usagers?   Jim Watson  26:50 D'abord et avant tout, je pense qu’il est important de terminer l’Étape 2 et de la mettre en branle. Il faut qu’un plus grand nombre de personnes utilisent le réseau de trains et le réseau d’autobus qui est relié au réseau de trains. La première phase de l’Étape 2 sera prête à l’automne 2022, ce qui n’est pas si loin. Je parle de la ligne existante de l’O-Train au diesel, pas de la ligne électrique. Mais ensuite, il y a la Ligne de la Confédération, qui va d’est en ouest. La prochaine étape sera en 2025, je crois, pour le prolongement vers l’est, et en 2026 pour le prolongement vers l’ouest, dans ces eaux-là. C’est ma préoccupation pour l’instant, et tout doit être fait pour que les travaux avancent. Ensuite, il faut obtenir le financement pour l’Étape 3, ce qui nous amènera à Barrhaven, Stittsville et Kanata. Par la suite, si on peut appeler ça l’Étape 4, il faudra voir comment on peut travailler avec Gatineau pour établir une connectivité avec leur futur réseau de tramway. Comment ce projet va-t-il pouvoir s’arrimer à notre réseau de train léger au centre-ville? C’est important ça, parce qu’il y a tellement de gens qui travaillent à Gatineau et qui vivent à Ottawa, et vice versa.   Dan Séguin  27:58 Merci. Maintenant, êtes-vous prêt à terminer l’entretien avec quelques questions en rafale?   Jim Watson  28:03 Bien sûr. J’ai l’impression de me retrouver à un quiz populaire à la télé!     Dan Séguin  28:06 Monsieur le Maire, quel est votre mot préféré?   Jim Watson  28:10 « Merci », on ne le dit pas assez souvent.   Dan Séguin  28:20 Quelle est votre vision idéale pour l’avenir d’Ottawa sur le plan de l’électricité?   Jim Watson  28:25 Eh bien, il faut continuer de progresser avec le train léger sur rail, avec l’électrification du réseau de transport en commun et, évidemment, il faut que les autobus du réseau et que les véhicules appartenant à la Ville deviennent électriques à 100 %.   Dan Séguin  28:40 Quelle est la chose dont vous ne pouvez pas vous passer?   Jim Watson  28:44 De l’eau – je bois beaucoup d’eau. Et vous devriez en faire autant!   Dan Séguin  28:49 Quelle habitude ou passe-temps avez-vous adopté pendant le confinement?   Jim Watson  28:53 Oh, probablement le fait d’être attaché à Netflix, de regarder beaucoup de mauvais films pour passer le temps.   Dan Séguin  29:04 Si on vous offrait un pouvoir magique, qu’est-ce que vous choisiriez?   Jim Watson  29:08 Je choisirais de pouvoir ramener les gens à la vie.   Dan Séguin  29:11 OK, si vous pouviez retourner dans le temps pour parler à votre propre personne à l’âge de 18 ans, que diriez-vous à ce jeune Jim Watson?   Jim Watson  29:18 Je lui dirais probablement d’étudier en droit pour avoir des options dans la vie, de ne pas compter uniquement sur la politique, parce qu’il n’y a pas de sécurité d’emploi dans ce domaine.   Dan Séguin  29:24 Dernière question : actuellement, qu’est-ce que vous trouvez de plus intéressant dans la vie publique?   Jim Watson  29:33 Il y a beaucoup de bonnes choses dans notre collectivité. Elles sont souvent assombries par des sentiments négatifs, et les réseaux sociaux ont tendance à être négatifs, parce que les gens s’y attaquent les uns les autres. Mais j’ai souvent l’occasion de voir le bon côté de la ville d’Ottawa, vous savez un voisin qui aide un voisin, un étranger qui aide un étranger. Je l’ai vu durant les inondations, lors des tornades et depuis le début de la pandémie. Et il y a beaucoup de bonté dans le monde; malheureusement, elle est souvent éclipsée par la négativité qui ressort dans les médias.   Dan Séguin  30:05 Eh bien Monsieur le Maire, nous voici à la fin d’un autre épisode du balado ThinkEnergy. Merci beaucoup d’avoir été avec nous aujourd’hui. C’était un grand plaisir.   Jim Watson  30:15 Merci beaucoup à vous, c’était un honneur. Merci de m’avoir invité. À la prochaine.   Dan Séguin  30:22 Merci à tous nos auditeurs. J’espère vraiment que vous avez aimé cet épisode du balado ThinkEnergy. Pour écouter les épisodes précédents, n’hésitez pas à visiter notre site Web à hydroottawa.com/podcast. Et en terminant, si vous appréciez les sujets abordés dans notre balado, ne manquez pas de vous abonner. C’est tout pour aujourd’hui. À bientôt tout le monde.

Electricity and trees seldom mix. But that doesn't mean they can't be good neighbors. Across the city of Ottawa, there are an estimated 185,000 trees in proximity to Hydro Ottawa's 2,800 kilometers of overhead high-voltage power lines. The lines run to all neighborhoods bringing electricity to over 340,000 homes and businesses. As a utility, the goal is to balance power supply reliability with environmental concerns, such as respecting the natural beauty of our community’s tree canopy. In this episode, Nick Levac, Supervisor of Distribution Operations at Hydro Ottawa, and Greg Tipman, Forestry Inspector at Hydro Ottawa, share all about their efforts in striking this balance. Related Content & Links: Hydro Ottawa Tree Planting Advice [PDF]: https://static.hydroottawa.com/documents/publications/safety/tree_planting_advice-EN.pdf Greg Tipman’s favourite trees: Eastern white pine - https://www.ontario.ca/page/eastern-white-pine  The monkey puzzle tree - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Araucaria_araucana  Giant Sequoia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequoiadendron_giganteum  Charlie Brown Christmas tree - https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Charlie_Brown_tree Transcript: Dan Seguin  00:42 Hey, everyone, welcome back. This is the ThinkEnergy podcast. Dr. Thomas Fuller said it best, "He that plants trees loves others besides himself." And that dates back to 1732. Now let's fast forward to today. Based on aerial imagery and laser sensory technology, the National Capital Commission reported in a recent study that nearly half of the National Capital Region is under the cover of trees: 46% to be precise. Given Dr. Fuller's memorable quote, it looks like Ottawa-Gatineau has a lot of love for its residents. And if you know anything about electricity, you know that electricity and trees seldom mix. But that doesn't mean they can't be good neighbors. Across the city of Ottawa, there are an estimate of 185,000 trees in proximity to Hydro Ottawa's has 2800 kilometers of overhead high-voltage power lines. The lines run to all neighborhoods bringing electricity to over 340,000 homes and businesses. As a utility, the goal is always to balance reliability of the power supply with the environmental concerns such as respecting the natural beauty of your community’s tree canopy. Trees provide all sorts of environmental and energy saving benefits from absorbing CO2 to releasing oxygen back into the air, to providing shade from the sun and reducing excess heat in our home if they're planted in the right place. But, that being said, during storms, broken tree branches can bring down power lines and create serious public safety concerns like damaged equipment, fires, and power outages. Vegetation management, commonly known as tree trimming, identifies hazards and fixes them by pruning trees and redirecting growth away from power lines. All the while, making every effort to ensure trees remain healthy. Highly skilled arborists trim and cut trees near electrical equipment and wires based on tree species growth patterns, geography and line voltage. This work has resulted in reducing power outages by 40% in Ottawa. In fact, between 2019 and 2020, tree contact with power lines was the cause of only 7% of all outages. This is in large part thanks to the preventive measures that utilities like Hydro Ottawa take all year long, with the extreme weather events we've witnessed in the past years, and as climate continues to change, the outcomes will create more problems for utilities to provide reliable power to customers without extended outages. So here's today's big question: In the age of climate change and environmental responsibility, how can utility companies strike a balance between maintaining reliable service, minimizing outages and maintaining a healthy and vibrant urban forest? To help us better understand this balancing act, I've invited our Supervisor of Distribution Operations at Hydro Ottawa Nick Levac and one of the Forestry inspectors, Greg Tipman. Welcome to you both. Greg, I'll start with you. Can you tell us a bit about your work and what the biggest misconceptions are about tree trimming and vegetation control programs when it comes to electricity?   Greg Tipman  05:06 For sure, Dan, and just again, thanks for having us on your podcast this morning. It's getting kind of meat potatoes, you know, my daily job encompasses speaking with customers, addressing the vegetation concerns around power lines, auditing of the contractor we use, which is Asplundh Tree Service. There's also coordinating of our jobs, our time and material jobs. So it's stuff that I look at and deal with the customer and then gets delegated directly to a secondary crew to do that specific work for the customer. There's also writing of prescriptions for any work for other jobs for the customers. So specific work they want Hydro Ottawa to do that's outside of our regular trim program. Some of the biggest misconceptions that I've run into is that a lot of the public thinks that our tree work is just a hack and slash that there's no thought or science put into the tree trimming that's actually going on, when in actuality, we have a whole set of standards for proper pruning, and tree trimming of the species around the Hydro wires. And that kicks back to our working procedures or our lifeline clearing techniques. And then there's another misconception that I've run into quite a bit: a lot of people think that for us, or for our contractor to do the tree trimming, the power has to be shut off every single time. And that's, that's not the case. We like to keep it as a very rare scenario when we do have to shut the power off. And that's usually just for a safety issue for the for the tree trimmers.   Dan Seguin  06:56 Okay, Nick, we often say that trees and electrical wires don't mix. What types of dangerous situations can occur if they come into contact with one another? Is there maybe a recent example you can share with us?   Nick Levac  07:14 Yeah, so I mean, first in mine is obviously power outages. That's kind of the first thing that we hear about when a tree comes down on our conductors. But, you know, the power outages can vary from a whole circuit right back to a substation to just a localized outage in your community or along your streets. The other thing, if the tree does come down on the line, and our in our system doesn't experience an outage, oftentimes trees can catch on fire. So we've had, we've had examples over the years where a tree is rested on a line, nobody notices it, and then eventually, it'll catch on fire, which, which obviously can cause other issues. And especially in the summertime with dry conditions. If that does come down to the ground, I could, you know, start forest fires, which, unfortunately, our neighbors in the south of us have experienced down in California and stuff, but there was one larger outage. And I think it was a start in November, November 2, where a spruce tree that was quite a bit away from the line did fail, and it came down and took down two conductors out at the end of my road, I believe it was and it caused a large outage. In a sense, those are almost better to have because it's easier to find that tree and where the problem is, and we can get crews out to fix it in a quick manner. But that's probably the most recent one that we found that had a major outage and a big impact on system.   Dan Seguin  08:49 So we're clear, Nick, what are the guidelines that determine if tree trimming or vegetation management near power lines is required? What does sufficient clearance from electrical equipment look like?   Nick Levac  09:06 Yeah, so like Greg mentioned in the first question there, we have our arbors going through our system, and we're looking at standards that we trim to the city is divided up into about 30 vegetation management zones. And they're divided into either a two or three year trim cycle, which means you'll see arborist in your backyard or on the streets, trimming out to our guidelines, either every second year or third year. Our main goal, there's a couple of them. But our main goal when we're trimming to our standards that we have is when we come back and either two or three years, the vegetation that we trimmed out is still three feet away. There's different zones that we have from 10 feet back to the conductor or the live overhead wire, and from the wire out to three feet is called the restricted zone. And as I mentioned that that's where we do not want the vegetation to get into. Because if we, if it does get in there creates a bunch of different problems for our, for our tree arborist to go in there. And as Greg mentioned, outages is the last thing we want to do when we're trimming trees. And if that vegetation does get into that restricted zone, increased outages for trimming, there is an option that we have to look at which we're trying to avoid. So that's, that's kind of our main goal. We look at the species of tree and how much it would grow in a year. And as the arborist comes through, they're going to trim back that many feet. So if we have a fast growing species that grow, say, three or four feet a year, and we're going to be back in two years, we're going to trim that back three feet times two, plus the additional three feet. So we're looking at about a 10 foot trim on that.   Dan Seguin  10:49 Nick, pruning, and especially removal of interfering trees, often causes controversy. In an age of climate change and environmental responsibility, what do you tell folks that object to or have concerns about the important work you do to help keep the lights on and the trees safe?   Nick Levac  11:15 Yeah, that's a great question. We, you know, I think you hit the last word there. And your question kind of hits on our main goal of everything that we do here at hydro is safety. So not only we're looking out for the public safety, ensuring that trees aren't coming down on the line and staying energized. But we're also looking to know for worker safety. So as we're going through, we try to do preventative maintenance, so to speak. So very much like you get your oil change in a car, or you put your winter tires on this time of year, we're trying to trim trees away from the lines to make sure they don't come in contact that avoids outages, unplanned outages, especially because, you know, it's one thing to get a phone call to say, Hey, your power is going to be out because we're doing preventative maintenance, whether it's tree trimming, or upgrading electrical system, it's another thing to wake up at two o'clock in the morning, after lights out, heat off and everything and it's unexpected, and you're trying to get ready, your kids are at home or whatever. So preventative maintenance is the big thing. And we try to educate our customers that what we're doing out there is really just to make sure that we can decrease outages and especially those unplanned outages. The other thing that we look at when we're pruning trees is the tree health. And I know Greg's going to get into this I think a little bit later on. But just looking at the species a tree and how we trimmed them to make sure that the health of the tree is also a huge interest for our arborists that are up there. They're all certified trained arborist with some extra training on the electrical side, because obviously we're turning around live electrical lines. But when they get up into a tree, they're looking at the health of the tree. There's a lot of stuff once they get up into the canopy of the tree that they notice that you can't see from the ground. So they're taking into account and they're taking out any deadwood or anything in there and tried to not only like I mentioned before getting those clearances that we need for the electrical side, but also trying to enhance the tree growth away from our lines and looking at the health of the tree by taking the deadwood or anything out of it.   Dan Seguin  13:16 Okay, so back to you, Greg. I know you trim trees on public property that are within three meters of an overhead line. But what about on a private property? Trees near utility lines inherently carry serious risk to property owners who may be injured or killed when working on trees near power lines. What are homeowners responsible for? And when should they call us, the utility, to arrange for their help? Like a planned outage? Basically, what do homeowners need to know?   Greg Tipman  13:57 Yeah, Dan. So when you're speaking about kind of responsibilities on vegetation maintenance, Hydro Ottawa was responsible for the pole, the pole wire, and vegetation maintenance. The area around the high voltage wire that hydro trims as part of our responsibility is 10 feet from the primary which is usually the very top wire running pole, as well as about a three foot clearance around our low voltage or secondary wires. And again, that's the pole the pole wires just want to make that a bold statement. That's Hydro's responsibility as part of our maintenance package. Kind of like Nick was touching up on and that's that that happens, pending what grid what year, you know, two to three years central, within kind of the city core versus the outer rural areas. If a customer is looking to have work done on their tree which is growing out into their private property, and it's near our overhead wires, Hydro comes in free of charge, we get it clear 10 feet 10 feet back debris would stay on site. And then it would be the homeowners responsibility to either cut the tree down themselves hire private tree contractor, or if they wanted, they could also hire Hydro Ottawa, do our work for others program, and we would write them out a formal tree quote. And they would, they would pay an additional cost for that, that work that's outside of our regular maintenance scope. Now in regards to the wires running pole to house service wire, or if you're in a rural area, and it's a private primary wire, there's a couple options that they have for having those what those wires that vegetation trimmed out, they can either hire a private tree contractor, and Hydro Ottawa, or service department provides one free disconnect a year for any tree work. Little bit more legwork for the customer or the contractor to do, but it's an entirely viable option. The second option is they can again hire Hydro, to trim out their service wire to whatever specs we normally recommend it you know, it's a low voltage secondary wire to have about a three foot clearance on it, they want us to go with that option. I would write them out a formal tree quote, have all the details, proof of payment beforehand would be had. And then we would schedule in the customer an exact date. And they would essentially have the work done to what the quote was that they're paying for the work to be done and, and go from there. It's quite effective. We've gotten a lot of feedback from the customers about having their service wire trimmed down. And there's been a lot of good things to have come from having us on site. And just doing it all and not having to worry with them having to organize an outage on their house. So it's, it's been a good go.   Dan Seguin  17:03 Here's another one for you, Greg, went planting a young sapling, it's often difficult to imagine that in as few as 10 years, it could have a significant impact on the landscape with an expanding canopy as a homeowner or a landscaper. If you're planting a new tree, how important is it to contact your utility service provider? To discuss your plan? Do you have any tree planting advice? Or some good resources on what to plant? And where?   Greg Tipman  17:40 Yes, yes. So basically, Hydro Ottawa has a really good source on our internet page. Basically, just type in Google Hydro Ottawa Tree Planting Advice, and it's a pamphlet that's been put on to the internet and it has everything for suggestions of where the tree should be planted, what type of species is it? How tall? Will it grow? How wide will the canopy grow? How many feet back from an overhead wire should be planted? It has a breakdown of you know, species names, what soils are best to be planted in? You know, like I said, their typical growth structure in relation to overhead wires. And there's also advice given on planting around underground wires, which a lot of people you know, you don't see them, you don't really think they're there. But they are, you know, most people just see the, you know, the green box, the ground transformer, if you will, but where are the wires going? Which, which way Can I can I plant and whatnot. So it's a really great resource has a lot of information, a lot of diagrams. Definitely check it out. And then another great option would be just put a call in, have myself or Nick show up. And, you know, we can tell you, you know, basically where, what, what's the lay of the land? What is your yard showing you? You know, are there other trees in the neighborhood or in your yard, you can get a very good look just from seeing what's out there, what to expect. And then and then go from there.   Dan Seguin  19:29 Okay, we'll actually have for our listeners in the show notes. We'll have links to all of these publications and the actual section on the website. So definitely we'll drive traffic there. Because the last thing I think we want is for me to put your extension number, your mobile number and have 100 calls tomorrow.   Greg Tipman  19:51 There we go. I like push it all in there.   Dan Seguin  19:56 Okay, Nick. This next question might be in your wheelhouse. A power outage occurs when there's a direct contact between two conducting lines with face to face. Or by providing a path for electricity to travel to the ground. There are several other ways that vegetation, trees in particular, can cause power outages, wondering if you could expand on those causes and how utilities and folks in your profession mitigate that?   Nick Levac  20:35 Yeah, it's an interesting question. It's obviously something we look at all the time. And that's our biggest goal within our department is to mitigate those outages. And I actually came from a background in the lines department as a power line maintainer for 10 years and swung over and got into working with the veg. management program. And, you know, I'd say it's a really good partnership that we have right now, not only with, with Greg and our other utility forestry inspectors, but along with our contractor Asplund who's doing the work for us. And, you know, that's a constant conversation that we're having weekend week out. And not only are we reviewing any outages that might have occurred the week before and trying to follow up on those to see why those power outages occurred and how we can hopefully prevent them from reoccurring. But within the system itself, the electrical system, we have, it's very much like your house where it's set up where we have different circuits all the way through the city. And within each circuit, we have different fusing, the further you get away from the substation. So the fuse in coordination can really help out if you have a tree that falls at the very end of that circuit, we have the fusion set up in a way that it's only going to go back to the next device downstream. And if everything is working properly, that fuse will open up and it'll really shrink the size of that outage rather than going all the way back to the substation. So if you can imagine if you have 1000 customers on a circuit, and you have 10, different fuses all the way down, and that last one blows, you're going away affect 100 people instead of 1000 people. Also, within our system, we have devices called reclosers. So I'm sure many listeners have had their lights flicker on and off two or three times. And then unfortunately, after that third flicker, the power does stay off permanently. That means that there's a bigger issue on the line and that reclosure could self-clear. So those devices are there. For momentary outages, when they see a spike in amperage, they'll open up the circuit and give time for that tree or whatever that foreign interference is to clear itself. And then close back in with the hopes that once it closes back in that power will stay on. If it senses that it's still there, it'll open back up again. Hopefully allow it to clear a little bit longer closed back in again. And hopefully the second time's a charm. Unfortunately, sometimes that doesn't work. And then you experienced that outage, kind of the last kind of protection in the whole stream of protection devices is that circuit breaker back at the station. That's kind of the worst case if we see a circuit open up. That means that there's a major problem. Usually, like you mentioned there, there's a phase two phase kind of issue where two conductors have slapped together. And that's kind of what causes the biggest outage, that's when we know we have a large problem. And the other issue with that is because our circuits are so long, some of them you know, in the downtown core where we have more substations, it's a little bit easier to find because you know, the circuit might only be say a kilometer or two long, but if you get out into the rural Orleans, Kanata, down south - though, manotick, nepean area, you can have, you know, 10-15-20 kilometers a line. So, if your circuit breaker and your station opens up, that means that somewhere between your station and the end of the line is your problem. So there are fault indicators and stuff on your line that can help pinpoint it. But it definitely can make it more challenging when you're when you're starting back at your substation not having to patrol 20 kilometers a line versus if that fuse opens at the very end of your line, you know, okay, it's the last section within that line. The other thing that can really help us out is the customers in the field. So a lot of times we'll get calls in and it's great to get that information and Hydro Ottawa is very active on social media and that that definitely helps if, if a customer sees a problem if they see a line down if they see a bright blue flash if they hear a large loud bang. You know, first and foremost, let us know don't ever approach downed wires Stay away, even trees that could be leaning up against the wire. But I and I mentioned this before, just because the trees against the wire if that wire still energized that could potentially energize that trees, we want to make sure we stay back, you know. Stay back 10 meters from that tree stay back 10 meters from that electrical line because you don't know if it's on, or if it's still alive. So your safety is first and foremost, call in, call 911, if there's any, you know, immediate hazard fire, police can come in and assist, they will get a hold of our system office right away and direct us to that. Or if it's something that's, you know, a little bit less and you think that hydro should know, we have lots of different social media channels you can reach out on. And let us know. And that really does help because that information does find its way down to the crews in the fields. And it helps us get to the outage and find that problem that's causing the damage that much quicker.   Dan Seguin  25:51 Yeah, for sure. I know, historically, we've had customers actually send us photos on Twitter. Yeah, that we could actually send systems office so they can actually identify, they would know exactly where that is. And they helped out the guys on like the field workers.   Nick Levac  26:06 Yeah, no, that's, that's great. And I mean, I was, I was on that first response truck there 24/7crew for multiple years. And it was great. I mean, you know, when the days are getting darker and the nights it's in the middle of night, the last thing you want to do is be trying to find, find an outage and or the cause of an outage. And it's kind of like finding a needle in a haystack sometimes out there. So anything from the customers is a great help.   Dan Seguin  26:35 Yeah, definitely. Okay, in addition to being a qualified arborist, Greg, you also have extensive knowledge about electricity. Can you talk about this dual role and special qualifications that you have? How dangerous is your job? And do you work around live electricity at high voltage?   Greg Tipman  26:59 Yeah, Dan. So just a little background on my schooling and qualifications. I did my forestry technologist diploma at Algonquin - a two year program. And then from there, I moved out to BC to work on some really big trees. And while out there, I morphed into the utility side of tree work. And that's where I went and did my apprenticeship program. From there, you need approximately 4000 hours just to qualify, the program's a two year program, you've accumulated about 6000 hours around of live line clearing, working around the wires, you'll learn how it looks just all the basics, electricity, how it works, how to identify the equipment, that coupled with your actual tree work in the tree, the tools, special tools you'll be using, so dielectrically tools, how to operate bucket trucks, so on and so forth. Rigging big chunks of wood down in trees, how to do it safely, and all the while in close proximity to these overhead high voltage wires. It's very dangerous. I mean, you couple your, you know, 30-40-50-60 feet up hanging by ropes, you're using a chainsaw to cut wood. Plus, you have a live line that's, you know, five, six feet away from you. So it's definitely very dangerous. But the schooling, the on the job training that you get just, you know, old hands, showing you the techniques, the up to date, safety standards, and whatnot. It makes your comfort level something that would never, you know, come natural to you become second nature. So it's, it's definitely a process, it's definitely building the confidence over time. And then, you know, taking classes, learning whether it's through the International Society of arboriculture on the tree side of things for tree health, you know, one of the tree species tree biology pests, you know, a lot of times customers will ask, you know, why is my tree dying? What Why is it declining? A lot of times people will think, Oh, it's Hydro Ottawa you trimmed the tree incorrectly. Well, no, it's, you know, a pest infestation or you did some landscaping or whatnot, the roots have been killed and whatnot. So it's learning all that you know, information and coupling it and pairing it with the electrical side of things that it really makes for a harmonious job and, you know, a great aspect to keep learning There's always new information, new research coming out on trees and the electrical side of things you know, and then just basically, you know, having the resources also at Hydro Ottawa, it makes that partnership that much better for getting the work done and done safely.   Dan Seguin  30:24 So Greg, I've seen some amazing footage of folks in your profession climbing pretty high in trees. So besides not having a fear of heights. What's that like? And what's your favorite thing about your job? Have you ever been surprised by some birds or squirrels? Or, you know, have they surprised you? Or have you surprised them?   Greg Tipman  30:49 Yeah, so kind of, like I was touching on there. I mean, the fear of heights is not was never really the big deal. It was more trusting your gear. Knowing that you know what a 10-12 millimeter diameter rope is going to hold you and your gear. You know, it's going to hold, you know, wood swinging around and whatnot, it's not going to break off, you know that your knots have been tied correctly, they're not going to come undone, you're going to fall to your death and get injured or whatnot. Those were kind of the first fears to really get over. But once you get that it's practice, the more you do it, the more you get comfortable doing it. The more you feel safe and secure. I've definitely had some weird, interesting animal encounters while working in the trees. I've had birds land on my head and stay there while working. I've had raccoons, you know, climb out of hollows. I've had bats, you know, fly out from underneath bark. But probably the scariest was wasn't in the tree yet. But we're doing some ground slash in BC and probably 10-12 feet away. A black bear just goes running right by and yeah, it was exhilarating. But it was done in a flash and yeah, nothing. Nothing more. But you know, it definitely, you know, could have been a different interesting situation had it been a, you know, an angry bear, if you will. Yeah, for the most part. It's the job. You get to see nature all the time. And there's always something great to see, animal wise.   Dan Seguin  32:33 Cool. Okay, both. Are you ready to tag team here and close us off with some rapid fire questions?   Greg Tipman  32:43 Definitely.   Nick Levac  32:43 Yep.   Dan Seguin  32:45 Greg, what is your favorite tree?   Greg Tipman  32:48 Can I give you four Dan?   Dan Seguin  32:51 Sure. Why not?   Greg Tipman  32:53 So Eastern white pine. The monkey puzzle tree. Giant Sequoia and the Charlie Brown Christmas tree.   Dan Seguin  33:03 Okay, that's good. Yeah, we I might ask you to provide the links. So I can direct listeners to those trees. Nick, what is one thing you can't live without?   Nick Levac  33:18 That's an easy one. It's got to be my family. My two girls at home my lovely wife and, and probably a good cup of coffee or a nice Americano in the morning just to get things going.   Dan Seguin  33:29 Cool. Greg, what habit or hobby? Have you picked up during shelter in place?   Greg Tipman  33:37 Probably flying and crashing my drone.   Dan Seguin  33:43 Okay, yeah.   Greg Tipman  33:44 A little more practice.   Dan Seguin  33:47 Yeah, more practice! Nick, if you could have one superpower, what would it be?   Nick Levac  33:56 Ah, you know what I think never to age physically. Only in wisdom. The body's getting a little bit older and every you know, every time I go out and try to play hockey or do something now I wake up a little bit sore in the morning so I could keep my physical health. Maybe back when I was in my 20s. That would be amazing.   Dan Seguin  34:17 And what about you, Greg?   Greg Tipman  34:25 Maybe just unlimited superpowers.   Dan Seguin  34:28 All of them,   Greg Tipman  34:29 All of them!   Dan Seguin  34:30 Okay. Back to you, Nick. If you could turn back time and talk to your 18 year old self. What would you tell them?   Nick Levac  34:40 You know, I'd probably try to let them in on a couple of neat, you know, world events that were going to take place between then and then when they're my age now and just make Tell him to go there. Make sure he's present and no matter what the cost is. Sometimes you only get a once in a lifetime chance to see things and make sure he gets there to experience that life live.   Dan Seguin  35:05 Okay. And lastly, this one is for both. What do you currently find most interesting in your sector? I'll start with Greg.   Greg Tipman  35:15 It's a, it's really the day to day change, there's always a different challenge that's coming up, you're always in a different location dealing with different people. So it's never, you know, a monotonous job, it's, it's always fluid, there's always something new.   Dan Seguin  35:34 Okay, what about you, Nick.   Nick Levac  35:35 I, what excites me the most coming down the pipe, I think is the technology that hopefully we're going to be exposed to, I mean, Greg mentioned, crashing his drone, but you know, just even stuff like that, and us being able to fly over our overhead lines and really take a good snapshot of what that vegetation looks like within our city. And, and what we can do to kind of have a good mix between, you know, maintaining that urban canopy in Ottawa, and then also at the same time keeping the electricity on and if we can use different types of technology that's coming down the pipe to find a balance between the two that we can get out and, and proactively trim trees because we know exactly where they are. And also keep that urban canopy for that for customers here in Ottawa. I think there's a there's an interesting mix coming down, how we can leverage that technology to our advantage.   Dan Seguin  36:27 Okay, Nick, Greg, we reached the end of another episode of The ThinkEnergy podcast. I hope you had a lot of fun. And thank you very much for joining me today. I hope you I hope you enjoyed it.   Greg Tipman  36:42 Thanks again for having us, Dan.   Nick Levac  36:44 Yes, thank you, Dan.   Dan Seguin  36:48 Thank you for joining us today. I truly hope you enjoyed this episode of The ThinkEnergy podcast. For past episodes, make sure you visit our website hydroottawa.com/podcast. Lastly, if you found value in this podcast, be sure to subscribe. Anyway, this podcast is a wrap. Cheers, everyone.  

While we mostly want to say "Bah humbug" and forget 2020 ever happened, for me, there were some special moments and amazing guests that I had on the show this year who are worth remembering. In this episode, we look at the 12 days of podcast past with some of the most fascinating people I spoke to this year. You'll hear from industry experts about E-bikes, district and renewable energy, EVs and more. So here's today's big question: What did you learn from the ThinkEnergy podcast this year? Speakers:Host: Dan Seguin, Brandy Giannetta, Francis Bradley, Andrea Flowers, Jeff Westeinde, Seth Weintraub, Joseph Muglia, Kevin Lee, Anne-Raphaëlle Audouin, Blair Maye, Michelle Branigan, Raed Kadri --- Transcript: Dan Seguin  00:42 Hey, everyone, welcome back. This is a very special episode of The ThinkEnergy podcast. While we mostly want to say Bah, humbug, and forget 2020 ever happened. For me, there are some special moments and amazing guests that I had on the show this year, who are worth remembering. So for today's podcast, we're looking at the 12 days of podcast past with some of the most fascinating people I spoke to this year. You'll hear from industry experts about E-bikes, district and renewable energy, EV's and much more. So here's today's big question. What did you learn from the ThinkEnergy podcast this year?  Number 12. kicking us off. Number 12 is Kevin Lee, Chief Executive Officer for the Canadian Home Builders Association. And how net zero homes are the future with 111 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions released into the atmosphere from Canadian homes and buildings, every year, we're all looking at ways to reduce our carbon footprint. I asked Kevin when building or renovating to net zero standards. With the key considerations are: how much does it entail? Are we talking about everything from walls, ventilation, foundation, windows and more?   Kevin Lee  02:24 Oh, absolutely. I mean, certainly, when you're driving to get down to basically using close to zero energy, you have to look at everything that uses energy and that can you know, save energy and be efficient with energy. So every element of the home, as you said, walls, ceilings, foundations, windows, mechanical systems, hugely important. So you have to look at all of it and and where do you start? Well, frankly, if you're a homebuyer, you start by looking for a builder with the experience and know how to do this and and even through our programs. And we follow, we use the inner guide rating system, which is a government of Canada system and label for measuring the energy performance of homes. And there are energy advisors that are certified by the Government of Canada to do that. And we provide those energy advisors, additional training, to work with our builders to be experts and getting all the way to net zero. So they're sort of recognized through our program through additional training and education. So really as a as a homebuyer or a homeowner, because we now have a retrofit program as well for renovating houses to get to this level. Really, it's finding the right finding the right contractor homebuilder, you know, you can look at ch va.ca. And you can find a list of our rent renovators and our home builders that are certified, they know what they're doing. And they're working very closely with an energy advisor who works on the design because like I said, when you're trying to get to net zero, you're talking about squeezing every ounce of energy you can out of that house on and it's every element. So it's not so much that you start one place you look at everything.   Dan Seguin  04:01 Number 11. Coming in at number 11 I spoke to Jeff Westeinde de president of Zibi Canada, to ask him what happens when you use a network of hot and cold water pipes, bury them underground, and then use them to efficiently heat and cool buildings, and even whole communities. Jeff and his team are using district energy to achieve a zero carbon footprint at Zibi in 34 acre waterfront community in downtown Ottawa. On a hot summer day. Back in August, I asked him what's behind the one planet system he's looking to achieve.   Jeff Westeinde  04:44 We have to live as if we only have one planet. Most people when I say that look at me and sort of go but we only do have one planet and we need to remind them that if you live like a typical Canadian, you're using four planets of resources to sustain your unsustainable lifestyle in America. And using five planets, Europeans using three planets, and all we're doing is stealing from future generations and the developing world to sustain our unsustainable lifestyles. So one planet really is all about both environmental sustainability, like technical sustainability and social sustainability with one planets worth of resources and and it's a very holistic, holistic program, very audacious goals, we're going to talk about zero carbon. So as you know, Zb is in the nation's capital in Ottawa and Gatineau. You know, we are we are today we're going to be at plus 34 degrees, six months from now we'll be at minus 34 degrees Celsius, and and to be zero Kerman. In this environment, it's the Holy Grail. So achieving one plant is not an easy thing to do very audacious. But that's, that's where we said, No, that's the bar we need to hit, we need to again, leave our campsite better than we came to.   Dan Seguin  06:02 Number 10. Francis Bradley, the President and CEO of the Canadian lectricity Association, sat down with me in October to talk about Canada's electric future, and why we're well positioned to bring our electricity grid into the 21st century. Here is a favorite snippet of mine, from Francis Bradley, at number 10.   Francis Bradley  06:29 You know, to begin with, where we're starting from is we're starting from a place that is the envy frankly, of a lot of other jurisdictions. compared to most other countries, our sector is already clean. So we're starting from a clean, relatively clean sector to begin with. It's one of the cleanest electricity sectors in the world, we have the advantage of remarkably low carbon electricity grid, and it's been getting cleaner. So from 2000 to 2017, there's been a reduction in our sectors carbon dioxide, emissions of 42%. So more than 80% of the electricity in in Canada now comes from non emitting sources. And so we continue to focus on decarbonisation, the, the targets that I'd mentioned earlier, are going to mean that that decarbonisation and further electrification are going to absolutely be required if we're going to, to meet our our climate challenges of the future. So, you know, among those challenges that the that are out there, a lot of people think that electrification is about the growth of electric vehicles, but it's going to be a lot more than that. mass transit, heavy duty trucking, I mean, those are going to be significant into the future. But also, you know, you know, we looked at a study by the electric power Research Institute, they noted that electrification in the US could increase their demand, anywhere from 24 to 52%. We've seen studies in Canada that suggests that demand for electricity may double or even triple if we move forward and and begin to reach our 2050 targets.   Dan Seguin  08:14 Number nine. Like Francis said, when we talk about electrification of transportation, we tend to think about electric vehicles. But there's another sub genre of electric transportation that is rapidly growing in popularity. ebikes in August, Seth Weintraub and award winning tech journalist and blogger told me why he thinks electric bikes are one of the biggest technology transformations happening right now.   Seth Weintraub  08:49 Absolutely. And, you know, I didn't allude to it earlier. But when you think about how much power you actually need to get, you know, the 510 mile commute that you do every day, compared to even a an electric car. It's a fractal. It's a small fraction. So for instance, for my an entire week of going, you know, I do a lot of my work at the coffee shop in town for an entire week, I can go off of one 500 watt hour battery. So, you know, in comparison that would drive my Tesla, probably about a mile or so. You know, I'm going, I don't know, 20 times as far as you can go on a car on the same amount of energy. So you know, if everybody wrote a bike instead of, I mean, even an electric car, and then you know, obviously, gasoline cars are much worse on the environment than that. But I mean, just even compared to an electric car, an electric bike is so much more fuel efficient. You know, obviously Many people could ride bikes for the for one person riding a car in terms of energies usage.   Dan Seguin  10:05 Number eight. In September, I interviewed Andrea Flowers, the Senior Project Manager for environmental programs, planning, infrastructure, and economic development for the City of Ottawa, and learned that roughly 50% of all greenhouse gas emissions in Canada, come from municipalities. Andrea talked to me about an action plan called Energy Evolution to reduce emissions from the community by 100% by 2050. And from the city operations by 100% by 2040. At number eight, Here's an excerpt from that conversation,   Andrea Flowers  10:53 maybe a bit of background, so Ottawa undertakes greenhouse gas emissions inventories every year so that we know where our emissions come from. And in 2018, the most recent year that we have right now, roughly 90% of the emissions in Ottawa came from the building and transportation sectors, basically how we heat and cool our homes and how we get around the city. And if we look at those emissions, and the contributing sources of emissions, then natural gas is by far the largest contributor in the community, followed by gasoline and diesel. And, of course, given the scope and scale of the transportation system in our building sector, it's going to be really difficult to shift away from these emission sources. And then even beyond this, of course, there's risk that the public won't make or accept the types of changes required. And I'm cognizant of the fact that there's a huge Equity and Inclusion risk for this transition, we need to find ways that everybody can participate in climate solutions, and not just the people who can afford it.   Dan Seguin  12:00 Number seven - I sat down with Jim Pegg, Director of infrastructure, product and service at environment energy solutions, to understand what part utilities play in electric vehicle infrastructure and services to encourage a smooth transition for EV adoption. utility is absolutely a part of that. Because, you know, at the end of the day, people, myself included look to the utility for a reliable power supply. And as we're converting things like fleets, and even, especially transportation fleets, that reliable power supply becomes somewhat critical to the economy in the sense that moving people around, you know, transportation move people around, if the lights go out, you want to make sure you've got maybe a good redundant backup supply, or you have a system that's going to allow for switching the distribution system, and maybe even automated switching switching at some point. So utilities are doing lots of different things. You know, as they as they work to change that ever changing landscape, again, COVID is a great example of that, right? With a lot of people working from home, the utilities are, are working hard to, to make sure that they don't disrupt people that are working from home, regarding the large oil companies. And I think, I believe, I believe we'll see more and more of those organizations getting involved with with Evie charging infrastructure. You know, as you noted, gas stations are everywhere and well suited for fast charging. We see more innovation on how to best use those properties. I think the electrification of vehicles is going to drive many changes in that respect.  Number six. At number six, on my year and wrap up, I sat down with Anne-Raphaelle Audouin, president and CEO of Waterpower Canada, and learned that Canada is the second largest generator of hydro electricity in the world. I wanted to find out what's next for Canada's water power industry.   Anne-Raphaëlle Audouin  14:15 When I when I talk to Canadians and also to policymakers. Sometimes they tell me Well, you know, yes, we've got a lot of hydro power in Canada, it's more than 60% of our generation. But surely, because it's so big, we must be tapped out. There must there must not be any more hydro to develop. And then it's it couldn't be further from the truth. We actually have a lot of water. In Canada, we've got good innovation, great sites still to develop. So our untapped potential is actually more than double our existing installed capacity. So we've got about 85,000 megawatt of current installed capacity. So you can you can only imagine what we could do if we were to just develop a portion of the untapped technical potential. And and the great news about that now I always emphasize that when I when I speak at conferences or when I when I, you know, have discussions with government and stakeholders in general is to say that that potential is not just a reality in one province. It's a reality across the country. So when we look at decarbonizing, electrifying, all of those great things that you know are happening are going to happen, you know, over the next few years.   Dan Seguin  15:31 Number five, you can't talk about electricity without talking about power outages. I sat down with Joseph Moglia, Director of system operations and grid automation at Hydro Ottawa, to talk about what happens behind the scenes when a storm approaches. And what happens before, during and after Mother Nature strikes. At number five, it's Joseph Moglia.   Joseph Muglia  16:01 So really, the very first priority is to send our crews out to assess the damage and figure out really what we're dealing with system wide citywide, get a good idea of really what what infrastructure has been affected. Once we've identified the extent of the damage and any safety concerns to the public or to our workers, we begin the restoration. What most people don't know is that there's an amazing amount of coordination and work that's going on and in our control room during an event just as much as what's going out in the field. So all of the cables and the infrastructure that you see on the ground and, and has been damaged or essentially, you know, dangerous situations that might be out there, they first have to be switched off from our control room so that we can work on the infrastructure safely. So we take the opportunity a few times a year, to really tabletop exercises that will prepare us will help us prepare for incidents or large outages that may that may occur, regardless of what what the the effect might be, whether it's a bad storm, or just a large power outage. And the case of a couple years ago, tornadoes, we prepare for that we're constantly trying to keep our folks up to speed and trained so that we we can seamlessly go from like a blue sky event where we think about what could potentially happen to being involved in the middle of a storm. And usually our staff can can transition from normal day to storm mode quite easily. We're monitoring weather 24 hours a day, every single day of the year. And so when when we see weather approaching, and then once a storm hits, and I'm using a storm as the as an example. Once the storm arrives, we've already been prepped, we've already got folks that are positioned and ready to respond.   Dan Seguin  18:09 Number four, where only 5% of electricity workforce is young people compared to 14% across all other sectors, and only 26% is women. I talk to Michelle Branigan, CEO of the electricity, Human Resources Canada to find out what is being done to encourage a more dynamic workforce for the future. At number four, here's a clip of my conversation with Michelle:   Michelle Branigan  18:39 women that are working here right now in the sector have have told us that having a support network, having somebody to mentor them, has made the difference on whether they have actually stayed or not. That's made a big difference. You know how hard it is to affect cultural change, right? It takes a long time, but who has to lead that change? The CEO, the leader, the president of the organization, needs to do that. And it's the premise of the Accord that to affect systemic change, you need to have buy in at that senior level, and industry leaders need to have a bold vision. But they need to do more than just talk about it. They need to set the standard for everybody in the organization to follow.   Dan Seguin  19:24 Number three. Have you ever smelled a pickle that is being electrocuted? That was the big question I had for Blair Maye, who helped me oversee the electricity safety and conservation program that entertains and educates school aged children across Ontario about electrical safety. At number three, here's a bit of my conversation with Blair and why it's important to teach kids young to be smarter and safer around electricity.   Blair Maye  19:58 A lot of electrical accidents. originate with adults, when they don't know what to do around electricity, you know, and it's sad. And that's why we do these presentations. So a couple of the takeaways that I've always remember that teachers and adults have come up to me and said that they really love to hear about. I know I talked a lot about the GFCI, ground fault circuit interrupter. But testing it once a month, is so important. And we want to make sure that from the JK all the way to the grade eight, they're going home and teaching their parents about this. And the teachers love to know that that is such an important thing that can save their lives. Also, the toaster, a lot of people still today will try to put a fork or a spoon inside the toaster. Yeah, and they think that they're, they think that they're ahead of the curve, because they know to unplug it. The one problem is if they damage one of the filaments, those thin, tiny little wires inside the next time they plug it in bang, they end up getting a shock.   Dan Seguin  20:53 Number two - if you've been listening to the podcast this year, you'll know I love to talk about the future, and innovation. That's why at number two, I asked, Have you ever dreamed of a day your car can drive itself? The accelerating rate of research and development in automation, and artificial intelligence is indicating that this dream may become a reality very soon. Raed Kadri, the head of the Ontario's autonomous vehicle Innovation Network shares fascinating insight into this world:   Raed Kadri  21:33 the number one thing that people are trying to achieve is the promise of, of increased safety as a result of these technologies, if you look at things like a das advanced Driver Assist system systems is is the fact that the vehicle and the sensors are helping, are perceiving something that you may not have perceived. And they're they're warning you and so it's able to help you mitigate, hopefully mitigate mitigate something in advance of it of it occurring. And safety is the key and what the at the high level what everybody's hoping to achieve from all of this, but, but once the technology is there, there's a whole wide range of things that can also be achieved as a secondary piece of this and this is where people looking at it is is is is increased efficiency as productivity is better flow, better understanding of the traffic system, better understanding of, of the of the users of the vehicles in such a way where, you know, of course keeping, you know, security and privacy paramount.   Dan Seguin  22:36 Number one, we've come to the last clip of my 12 days of podcasts year end wrap up. And it's fitting that it's about renewable energy, and the realistic strategies for increasing the supply to permanently replace any remaining carbon intensive energy sources in Canada. Here. Brandy Giannetta, Senior Director at the Canadian Renewable Energy Association talks about how the renewable energy industry is primed to enter a new phase of growth, mostly thanks to a culture shift. Here is number one,   Brandy Giannetta  23:19 The scalability of our energy production and using Canada and abroad is really a factor there because we can do it at whatever scale needed for whatever system, you know, is being sought. So a consciousness about the environment continues to grow alongside that. So we've got energy policy and economic stimulus, but we also have environmental policy, and the drivers for decarbonisation, and electrification of the sectors that aren't traditionally powered by electricity, like cars and transportation. But a large scale as well as buildings are really increasing the demand for energy solutions that are non emitting affordable, scalable, flexible, and all of those great things. And that's something that obviously our industries can provide. So our vision really, ultimately is to ensure that renewable energy being solar and wind and an energy storage on top of that are playing that central role as we transform the mix so that we can continue to provide those solutions across the board.   Dan Seguin  24:11 Well, we've reached the end of another episode and another year of the thick energy podcast. I hope you had fun tuning in. I really do. It's at this point in the program. I usually ask my guests some rapid fire questions. I never answered them myself. So I thought I'd do it now. I hope you enjoy this.  What is your favorite word? Well, for me, I would have to say it's okie dokie.  What is the one thing you can't live without? Actually, that's a tough one. It's a toss up between peanut butter and chocolate.  What habit or hobby Have you picked up during shelter in place? I would have to say my wife and I purchased ebikes and we've taken up biking If you could have one superpower. What would it be? Well, for me, it would be immortality.  If you could turn back time and talk to your 18 year old self, what would you tell them? Actually, that's a pretty cool one: Never forget that everything comes at a price. So work hard and stay humble and pay it forward. And for the last one, what do I currently find most interesting in my sector? Well, I think for me, it's the rise of voice technology, and artificial intelligence, and how it's going to change businesses. 2020 has certainly been interesting. Special thanks to all of my guests who took the time this year during a global pandemic, to come on the show and share their expertise, passion, and knowledge with me. For now, Happy Holidays, and Happy New Year! See you all in 2021 as we discuss even more thought provoking topics in the energy sector. Ciao everybody.

2020 has been a challenge and a half – for individuals, families, businesses, and more. In this episode, we look at the impact of COVID-19 on Hydro Ottawa’s operations, employees and customers.  Bryce Conrad, President and CEO of Hydro Ottawa, shares the lessons that he learned while leading in these uncertain times as well as the importance of fostering resilience and flexibility in all areas of a business. He also sheds light on most pressing concerns facing utility companies upon entering the first winter of this pandemic. Related Content & Links: Website: https://hydroottawa.com/ Twitter: @hydroottawa --- Transcript: Dan Seguin  00:42 Hey, everyone, welcome back. This is the ThinkEnergy podcast. While the energy sector has weathered floods, ice storms and tornadoes. The COVID-19 pandemic is a crisis unlike anything a utility company has experienced before. It's safe to say that nearly every industry has had their business models, service offerings, and bottom line impacted by COVID-19. While no business or industry is immune, there's no denying that safe and reliable power for hospitals, businesses and homes is just as if not more important than ever. That in turn has shone a light on how essential local utility companies really are. While a lot of us are working remotely, the reality is that there are some jobs that can't be done from home. As an essential service. Utility field workers continue to work out in communities on critical projects to ensure grid stability, and respond to power outages to make sure the power is there when you need it. So how has the pandemic tested utility emergency response and business continuity plans and what new energy usage patterns are emerging? With energy demand, decreasing for industrial and commercial customers, and increasing for residential customers, overall, there has been a reduction of total electricity demand by approximately 10 to 30%. Across the industry. There's no denying that this shift is having an impact on our energy habits and our collective environmental footprint. So here's today's big question. What are the most pressing concerns facing utility companies as we enter our first winter of this pandemic. To shed some light on some of their offer one and one for all collaborative approach, I've invited Bryce Conrad, who has been serving as president and chief executive officer of Hydro Ottawa since 2011.  Bryce: first, what is something you've learned about yourself during COVID? And how is the team doing overall at Hydro Ottawa as we enter the first winter of the pandemic?   Bryce Conrad  03:35 That's great question. So what have I learned about myself? I guess the surprising part was just how much of a social butterfly I seem to be, you know, this pandemic, where you're sort of forced into your house, and you're forced into these small bubbles. You know, intuitively at the start, I thought, this is kind of great, no one to bug me, I can do my thing. But after about two weeks, I was going a little stir crazy. So you really, you really miss the social interaction you get, you know, whether it be in the office or, you know, with your colleagues across the country. So that part was a bit surprising. In terms of the team. Look, you know, I don't think people understand how good our team actually is. You know, we started tracking this pandemic, back in January, I remember having the initial conversation with Bruce and Lynn and, you know, they're saying this thing is, you know, we're hearing about this and we, you know, maybe we should send it back to in our business continuity plan, and I thought, Well, okay, I mean, at that point in time, it was still something off in a far off remote place and pretty far away from Ottawa. So we activated the pandemic plan, our business continuity plan, specifically the pandemic plan. Kind of mid-January. Whereas with kind of a kind of a watch and see kind of approach, and you know, followed it and tracked it and you know, as the situation worsened, then you saw it starting to come across, you know, we started to make some decisions with respect to travel and started to curtail expenditures and limiting this and that. And then when it became obvious in February, I remember having a conversation with the executive team saying, you know, we need to get ready to shut this place down. You know, the good news is we had the plan, the plan was good. And we executed on the plan so that when we made the final decision to sort of send people home, to work from home. You know, there was no, there was no panic by any stretch of the imagination, it was, it was pretty matter of fact, and, quite frankly, the team was set up and ready to go. So we can effectively throw the switch the next day, which is what we did so. So the short answer. The question is, is the team's done exceptionally well, given the circumstances. I think it's been a tough time for people, a lot of anxiety, a lot of stress, a lot of uncertainty. But generally speaking, I think they've responded very well.   Dan Seguin  06:16 Hydro Ottawa has weathered ice storms, tornadoes, floods, these past years alone. What is something you've learned about the resiliency of utility companies? And how has the pandemic tested your emergency response and business continuity plan?   06:37 You know, what you what you've learned about utility companies is just that. It's just how resilient they actually are. Our ability to sort of keep on going. I feel like the US Postal Service's right, through snow and sleet and rain, you know, they keep doing their job. So yeah, that's it. I mean, the question is just how resilient the company has been how resilient company utility companies are. I mean, I have the privilege of sitting on these kind of, at the time, they were weekly calls across the country with all the CEOs of utilities through the Canadian Electricity Association. And, you know, it was comforting on the one hand to know that we were all dealing with this stuff together. Even more comforting to realize that we're probably further ahead of the game than most of our most of our peers. When we did our strategic direction back in, you know, four or five years ago now, one of the key elements was that we would, we should expect disruption in the business and disruption in the industry. And I won't pretend to be clairvoyant to say that I saw a pandemic coming at the time, but I certainly expected disruption. You know, the idea that we didn't want to be the taxicab industry when Uber arrived, we didn't want to be Blockbuster Video when Netflix arrived. So we wanted to be prepared. So you know, everything we've done over the past five years is been to sort of embrace that concept of disruption, prepare for it, whatever that took, whatever that meant. And as you saw when we moved to our new facilities, you know, we got rid of the big desktop computers we had, everyone has a laptop. So when we threw the switch and told people to work at home starting the next day, you know, Our IT people weren't out at BestBuy trying to buy, you know, 400 laptop computers, everyone was ready. And it was just a question of throwing the switch. So yeah, I think we're, I think we responded well, you know, in the course of my 10 years of the company, we've had tornadoes, we've had one in 100 year floods, we have more than 1000 year floods, we've now had a pandemic, I fully expect to look out the window and see the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse coming down. I mean, we're missing locusts. But that's about all we're missing at this point in time. So this has tested our plans, it has tested the strength of the company, and I think quite frankly, the company's done well through it. And, again, our plans, our plans, you put these plans in place, hoping you never have to implement them. But if need be, the plan is there and we executed to the plan and I think there's not a there's not a single thing that I would have done differently in hindsight. So I think I think the plan is stood the test of time. Good, good. Now,   Dan Seguin  09:41 Are you able to expand on how Hydro Ottawa is helping customers that are struggling? What do you think has been Hydro Ottawa's key role thus far in providing its customers with solutions for those who need that extra help?   Bryce Conrad  10:02 Yeah, you know, it's a great question, Dan. And obviously, living in Ottawa with the mix of customers that we have. And obviously a very large public sector footprint, whether it be the Government of Canada or the universities or the hospitals, I mean, we have a large public sector footprint and that public sector has been incredibly resilient during this time, you haven't seen layoffs or you haven't seen, you know, mass disruptions as a result, unlike some of my peers across the country who are dealing with, you know, 40 and 50% default rates and stuff like that. We haven't seen that in Ottawa, largely because of the mix that we have. But I do think that overshadows some of the real challenges. If you look at your local small businesses here in Ottawa, if you look the hair salons, the restaurants, the local bookstores, the local, retail establishments, those places, all have all just been hammered. And they've had to make really hard decisions. In some cases, we've seen people paying their hydro bill, so many small businesses paying their hydro bill on their credit card, because it didn't want to get cut off. I mean, just gut-wrenching stories like that, which, which, obviously, it's an obvious consequence of the downturn/the pandemic. So what, you know, what, what can we do, what have we done? I mean, the short answer is we're doing everything we can. We want to be supportive, the direction I've given is to bend over backwards to do whatever we can to help these people and these customers, and specifically small businesses. But at the end of the day, we also have to be responsible, and part of that responsibility is making sure that we're not socializing bad debts. So just because a restaurant or businesses going out of business, and not paying their bill, it's not fair to take that that their debt and put it onto the backs of people who are paying their bills. So it's achieving that balance, but specifically that we've allowed customers to enter into payment plans that are longer than we otherwise would have normally seen. We're allowing businesses up to 12 months to get their accounts back into good standing. You know, we've worked with the various provincial associations, and we've worked with the government. And I've spoken to the Minister a number of times since the pandemic took hold and we've been front and center and supporting a number of their initiatives, including, you know, extending the disconnection ban so that no one was getting cut off. You know, through to the end of July. We were actively promoting the idea of, you know, time of use pricing makes a lot of sense when businesses is businesses and businesses good. But when everybody is forced to start to work at home, you know, penalizing people, by making them pay higher rates during the day, didn't make a lot of sense. And so we're pleased to see the government move there and adopt these COVID rates. And more importantly, recently, they've come up with these COVID funds for both small businesses and residential customers. So we've been actively pushing and promoting those, getting them out to help people so that they don't have to, you know, use their credit card to pay their hydro bill. And our answer is always the same, it's been the same from day one and it is, "look, if you're struggling, we understand it," we mean, we're not we're not oblivious to the effects of the pandemic, we just need you to reach out and talk to us and see what we can do to help you and we have a number of tools that are in our toolbox that that we can bring to bear and help you out. So if anyone's listening to this and they're struggling, just please reach out by all means and we can see what we can do for you.   Dan Seguin  13:55 We all know that the world has definitely changed. From safeguarding, to stabilizing operations, liquidity people and supply chains, within Hydro Ottawa, did the pandemic accelerate momentum towards new ways of working automation or digitization?   Bryce Conrad  14:18 I think the answer is yes and no, you know. As you know, when we went, you know, as normal process in the company, it's a big company. And when we launch new digital tools, or software, we tend to sort of do soft launches, and then, you follow up with a lot of training, and then, you know, eventually we sort of take the training wheels off, and we let people use the technology. You know, we didn't have that opportunity in this case. And so, you know, we, when we went virtual, we went real virtual, so we implemented the Google suite of products and, you know, that's something that we normally would have done over a matter of three or four months and, you know, effectively in this case, we just threw the switch and said, you know, figure it out on your own, and here's some online tools to help you. So those tools were great, and they've been fantastic. And they've allowed us to work anywhere and everywhere, at any time and to work effectively. So I think that's, that's been great, you know, we did some things that we never thought we would have had to have done before, I think specifically of, you know, the Rate Application process, which is a huge undertaking, of company undertaking. And sort of, you know, you launch this thing as massive effort. And, you know, we were on the 20 yard line kind of thing and heading in and, you know, the pandemic hit, and, you know, by use of these tools and technologies, we were able to sort of get it across the goal line, and, you know, working with the Ontario Energy Board, who was incredibly responsive, I got to give him credit. You know, we did the first ever virtual rate hearings, you know, are these quasi-judicial processes were done over Zoom or using these technologies. So, you know, full credit to the team full credit to the OEB and the interveners, for, for working with us to sort of make that possible. So I mean, that's an example where I thought the tools are great. But if I'm being honest with you, it's also highlighted a pretty profound area of weakness. I see this day in and day out. I mean, these digital tools are great for transaction oriented decisions, you know, meetings become focused around a transaction or multiple transactions. But when you really want to do some sort of blue sky thinking, you want to think about strategy and sort of bring together and do the collaboration and the heart, the heart, outside the box, thinking around collaboration and trying to move things forward, at the highest level that is not easily done by these tools. It just, you know, three hour strategy session on a zoom call is akin to a day in Guantanamo Bay, it's just not something anybody ever wants. And it's just not conducive to a positive outcome. So I think that's an area where, notwithstanding how effective these tools have been, it's just nothing will replace that face to face kind of conversation that we've grown used to. And then the other thing is, is, and I'm a huge proponent of technology. On the scale of adoption, I'm going to be the early adopter, I'm going to make sure I've got the iPhone 12 before anybody else does, right. Technology doesn't change bad habits, it doesn't make up for bad decision making. And it certainly doesn't make bad managers, great leaders. And I think there's got to be some sense that these tools are or that they're tools, they're not replacing the judgment, they're not replacing the leadership. If anything, if we use them properly, they can help accentuate it. But I've seen instances where people just assume because we're doing it on zoom, that they can be different, different kinds of leaders kind of thing and it just doesn't work.   Dan Seguin  18:25 Hydro Ottawa has instilled a culture of safety among its field and operation workforce. frontline workers are juggling their professional obligations, alongside unusual family and childcare responsibilities on an extended basis without and end date on the horizon. How is your company supporting those employees and guarding against a distracted workforce to ensure safety on the job?   Bryce Conrad  19:00 I wish I had a better answer for this one, to be honest with you. I mean, the safety culture is it's part of the DNA of Hydro Ottawa. So that part I've never, you know, I think my crew, our outside crews, the technical staff, I think they're doing I think they're doing a great job. And I think they're managing. They're doing everything while respecting the public health guidelines. But the short answer is: It's a balance for us, right? You know, I tell staff all the time, you know, the ratepayers of Ottawa. They expect seven and a half hours a day at work of each and every employee and you get paid every two weeks for that work. If you have a toddler at home, or it's almost impossible to sort of find a way to do that. So, I mean, I have teenage kids at home and with my wife working remotely and them doing school online or whatever they're doing these days, I need to come back to work to the office just to get decent Wi Fi and bandwidth. I mean, I just don't think we're as productive at home as we otherwise like to think we are and or hope we are. But even now, with the prospect of vaccination in the future, I mean, we're still months away. And if you look at these numbers, if you look at the numbers attached to the second wave, this thing is going to still hit pretty hard. I mean, I saw this morning in the US that, you know, there's, there's a death every 30 seconds, unfortunately, we seem to be a whole lot more intelligent than or behaving a little bit more intelligently than they are. But look, we have safe, secure processes in place. My view is if you can go to a gym or a restaurant, and you can come to work. And I think Dr. Etches said it best in her last recent appearances before the city council that we just need to learn to live with this virus, and part of living is coming to work. So I think we've struck the right balance between safety and security and helping people. But I don't underestimate how difficult it's been for people. And you have to remember, this pandemic struck just on the tail end of the teacher strike. So a lot of families were dealing with that before this even started. So it's been a haul, I think we can all agree that 2020 sucks.   Dan Seguin  21:40 I agree, Bryce. These are unprecedented times peppered with operational challenges. This pandemic has delayed many operations and maintenance and capital projects. What are those challenges? And how are you adapting?   Bryce Conrad  22:02 Yeah, you know, there's oddly enough. My colleague, Toronto Hydro is the first to sort of point this out. And I didn't realize this is one of those things I didn't think about, but in some cases, the capital work has actually been able to accelerate. And if you think about it, in Toronto, that mean, there's dramatically less traffic on the roads are, they're able to sort of get from point A to point B, that much faster. Here in Ottawa, same concept, where our crews are able to move from one end of the city to the next relatively expeditiously. Moreover, they're able to get the necessary permits to do the work that they need to do probably a little easier and faster than they otherwise would, because there's so there's fewer cars on the road, less commuting. But sure, there are challenges, I mean, the crews need to work safely, so they have to adhere to the public safety guidelines, you know. So what does that mean? We put one person in a truck, whereas there used to be two or three. So you can appreciate that adds cost adds complexity, and that adds time to a project. But, you know, that's just the way we have to work. The other part of the challenge is, is quite frankly, and from the customer side of the equation is, you know, with everybody working from home. Well, even before people work from home, doing planned work, and taking an outage, to sort of fix a piece of equipment. There was never, there's never a good time to do that, you know, he would sort of plan for doing it between 2 and 4am in the morning. And you know, of course, there'll be complaints the next day, because you did something between 2 and 4am. So, you know, take that now and say, Okay, well, I now have with everyone now working at home, when is the right time to take a planned outage? So, you know, people are their livelihoods are depending on their ability to access their computers and Wi Fi. So it just it makes it that much more complicated, I guess. And so, our answers, we're only taking outages in those very, very few and infrequent instances where we absolutely have to, because we recognize that the adverse impact is going to have on our customers but so we're adapting I think that's probably the best the best sense of the word.   Dan Seguin  24:33 Would you say that operating models have or will change with more remote working and more flexible structure? What does the future workplace look like to you?   Bryce Conrad  24:48 Yeah, this one, man, damn this is this is a heavy question this there's a lot packed in here. So let me just state categorically. I do believe we will see way, we'll see a change in the way we work. But I think the changes in the transitional actually be more aggressive than what people are counting on, people are thinking, well, I'll just spend more time working from home. And my answer is, maybe, but I think this is going to accelerate some other tectonic plates in society that will likely have an even more profound impact on the way we work than just simply saying, we're going to work from home. I mean, look, this pandemic has shown that we can work remotely notwithstanding the fact that I would take issue with anyone, well, not anyone, but I would take issue with people that say they're more productive working from home than they're in the office, I just, I don't see the collaboration, I don't see the creativity that I would otherwise see in the office, I don't see that at home, when you're working at home or communicating by these tools, as I referenced earlier. But look, I think the tectonic plates that I'm talking about and going forward in the future, I think are big things like artificial intelligence and machine learning, and, you know, robotics and stuff like that. And I think those are probably, quite frankly, going to, we're going to come out of this pandemic, and those tectonic plates that were that are moving are going to move even faster because of the pandemic, because people will see that, okay, this has happened, I need to, I need to sort of strengthen my operations. And here's a quick way of doing it. And you just have to look at sort of robotics as an example, you know, robots don't take a day off. So they don't get they don't get affected by COVID. So you know, if you can robotize, your operations, if you can afford to do it, you're going to try to do it. And, and there's good and there's bad, and there's some really profoundly ugly aspects of that, right. And if you think about, you think about the good, right. So you think about sort of, you know, just healthcare in general, and sort of the idea that, you know, we've all been to doctors and hospitals, where you sort of stand there and they look at those charts. And you wonder, surely to God, there's more efficient way of tracking people's health and then by paper charts. So you can imagine sort of surgical interventions via robots, you can use sensors on your body telling you, you know, when you're going to have a heart attack, and you know, measuring your circadian rhythm and precluding that heart attack from happening, those are the good things in the world of electronic health and all that sort of stuff. Just it's fascinating to think about the upsides. The downsides is I mean, it's also quite obvious if you've been to a McDonald's recently, the first thing you see when you walk in, is a kiosk, a display where you can sort of order you know, order your own food and pay right there. Well, that's replaced the job. And that's replaced a 16 year old kid whose first job it was to take an order at McDonald's. So you think okay, well, those aren't great jobs anyway, right. But you look at a company like mindbridge AI, here in Canada, which is a company that effectively found a way to do machine learning around audits. You know, I've been here for 10 years and done audits, every year of all of our companies, every audit that we do largely is based on a sample, just the nature of you take a sample of those transactions, and you audit them to make sure that they're all done properly. Well, this machine, this mindbridge technology, they don't take samples, they audit each and every transaction, and they can do it like in a matter of minutes. And they're able to find errors that an auditor would never be able to find. So you think about that as what is the future hold for auditing if you're doing all this stuff via machine learning and automated AI. And then the truly terrifying aspect of it, and I tell my board this on a regular basis is when you start to think about what the impact of those technologies are, if you can weaponize them. And in cybersecurity is an obvious place like, you know, when we do our tests and penetration tests and all that good stuff to make sure our system is robust and reliable, which it is, you know, it's all done, kind of under the polite rules of society. But if you're able to sort of weaponize AI and machine learning, they're just going to it's, it just takes it to a new threat level, which, which is truly, truly terrifying. And I don't want to sound like you know, Terminator one here kind of thing, but you know, it's a scary future if you think about it that way.   Dan Seguin  30:00 Even in the midst of a pandemic, not everything can be done virtually at essential businesses. How do you create back to office plans that leverage best practices, minimize risk to your employees and maintain continuity of operations? And do all of that while focusing on what's mission critical?   Bryce Conrad  30:27 Yeah, well, I mean, the short answer is you start with the science and you follow the public health and you adhere to public health guidelines. So we're obviously an essential workforce, we do essential work in the city of Ottawa. And yeah, we we've, our plan has been constantly tailored in reflecting the best advice that we get from public health. So you know, we've had probably over 200 employees tested for covid now, and we've had one positive, and that one positive is directly related to a social interaction that happened on a weekend outside of the office. So, you know, we take a bit of solace in the fact that our protocols are working and they're keeping people safe. So, you know, that's the in itself is a short answer. But I mean, I'd prefer also these calls that we're having on a weekly basis with some of my peers across the country. You know, we're all struggling with the same concept of how to get people back to work in a responsible and safe way. You know, the blue team/orange team that we've come up with here is not it's not novel. Some of my peers OPG, they've been doing that as well, where they've brought back half their staff one week, they work from home the next week, I think they're bringing in shifts that's what we've effectively done here. And it's worked, as I said, some of our some of our more mission critical functions, if you think of the system office, you know, we've taken an even more deliberate and more protective stance around them, I mean, they have to come to work, you can't run the system from your from home. So you know, we've effectively created two system offices a backup one we always had two, but you know, we've staffing to now for the sake of ensuring that we can always if there's an outbreak in one, we can still run the system from the other. And quite frankly, we toyed with the idea of a third where, you know, if we were to have employees who were asymptomatic, but still positive for COVID. And they felt in, they could still come to work, we would create, quote, unquote, a dirty system office, where they could come to work and do their job. And as long as they're asymptomatic and weren't feeling the ill effects associated with it and still do the job, we would potentially look at creating a third one that we haven't had to go that far. But those are some of the practices that some of my peers have put in place across the country and some of the lessons that we've learned from them. But again, in some cases, we've carved our own a lot of cases, we've carved our own way forward. And I give full credit to the team, to the HR team for doing that in facilities, they done things that I never thought of, you know, they've thought of come up with plans. And, and again, you know, the fact that we've, you know, knock on wood, haven't had a COVID positive case in the office is a testament to them, and that, that work that they've done.   Dan Seguin  33:35 I'd love to hear your thoughts on how the lockdowns and social distancing measures have triggered a historic decline in emissions while increasing public appreciation for improved climate conditions. Where do you think we're headed as an industry?   Bryce Conrad  33:55 Yeah, it's truly fascinating. And I'm sure you've seen the photo of the canals in Venice before and after the pandemic, before it was looked like a kind of a brown cesspool of garbage. And afterwards, it looks like this crystal blue thing that you would only see in the, the Venetian in Las Vegas, you know, if you can see the bottom of the water kind of thing. So it's pretty amazing. So, you know, look, if I'm being honest, I think the pandemic is going to be nothing compared to the eventual impact of climate change, right? Climate change is the single existential threat that we need to deal with next, and here not well, we've seen the impacts of climate change on an annual basis. Again, I just, let's talk about the last three years. We had a one in 100 year flood, a one in 1000 year flood and we had six tornadoes, touchdown. I mean, you know, you can argue that, you know, these are just kind of normal cyclical weather patterns, but the evidence is not there. I mean, these things just don't. Stats don't lie that way. So where do I think we're headed as an industry? I think, look, I think we're going to be at the forefront of dealing with climate change as a as a threat, I think you see OPG, which obviously full credit to them, but they just came out the other day saying that they would be carbon neutral in their operations by 2040. Or maybe even sooner I have read that was 2040. But maybe an earlier. The city of Ottawa has committed to being carbon neutral by 2050. So I think, you know, as utility, we obviously play a pretty key role in supporting that agenda. And you know, if anything, this, this pandemic is, is kind of has truly heightened people's appreciation for the little things that can be done that have big impacts. So, you know, I expect when we do get back to work, whenever that looks like, I fully expect the federal government is going to adopt a kind of a more lenient approach to working from home, if nothing else, I can't imagine those office buildings in downtown Ottawa are going to be filled up the day after a vaccine is released, I think they're going to, quite frankly, will start to encourage people to work from home as a means of sort of controlling their carbon footprint. So I think you'll see public transit, continue to develop and grow. And I think we're seeing with the electrification of public transit here in Ottawa. That's a trend that's going to continue as well. So I think if nothing, if nothing good comes out of this pandemic, other than an appreciation for our collective impact on the environment. I think that that in itself is not a bad thing.   Dan Seguin  37:03 Okay, with people staying home and running home offices. Have we seen a shift in the distribution of where electricity is being used thinking of residential neighborhoods, and a leveling of peak hours? Is the curve expected to flatten as each household distributes the usage more evenly? How will this impact the grid as a whole?   Bryce Conrad  37:33 Well, the last I mean, the last part of the question is that it won't impact the grid, because the grid is built for peak. So you know, at least hopefully it won't impact the grid. But and I should also preface by saying I'm not an engineer. So you know, I just play one on TV from time to time. But look, the curve has flattened, obviously, as more and more people work from home. But I don't believe there's any real impact on the grid. Although you are seeing the load shift. I mean, you think about downtown Ottawa when those office buildings are full, you know, take a good hot day in July, when the air conditioning is running at a good pace. I mean, that those are those are those buildings are big loads, and they're full of people. You take that load away, and you distribute it back away from the downtown substations and out into the barrhavens and Kanata and Orleans and other parts. So I think you're seeing a dispersion of the load across the city. But the good news is that the grid is built to accommodate that, obviously, and we haven't seen any deleterious effects associated with that. So I think we'll be fine. The grid will be fine. I do expect, you know, at some point, we're going to have to figure out what to do with those downtown buildings, you know, you think of like a place de ville tower, which has got 29 floors? And what 12 elevators. You know, are you going to see a maximum occupancy in there, again, you're going to see another 2000 employees back there, you know, sort of lining up to go in the elevator every morning, and then what every afternoon, I just don't think that's going to happen. So I think this load transfer maybe, well, not permanent, I think it will be more. I don't think you'll see a return to normal, quote unquote, normal. When the when people go back, if they go back.   Dan Seguin  39:52 Okay, I think you've answered this next one. But some folks may not know that Hydro Ottawa generates about 128 megawatts. Renewable power? How are changing load patterns impacting / or will they impact the generation output?   Bryce Conrad  40:10 Yeah, no, the short answer is no, there's no real impact on the output. Our facilities, which we're incredibly proud of, both here in Ottawa, in Eastern Ontario, down through Kingston, and quite frankly, in upstate New York. So all the entire fleet of generating assets are working well. And they're contracted. So you know, the power is effectively sold back into the grid. Whether the power is being used in the grid is, you know, it's another story, but the, there's no real impact on our generating assets. Other than, you know, the employees that run those assets have had to take the same precautions as every other employee has.   Dan Seguin  40:59 Okay. Some of the key and unexpected outcomes of this pandemic are the various costs that are being incurred by utilities, including collection shortfalls, continuing service to customers unable to pay, and increased operational burdens from managing a distributed workforce. All the while providing uninterrupted service during the period of significant constraints. Looking at the post pandemic horizon, what are some of the business lessons you've learned?   Bryce Conrad  41:39 Yeah, I mean, look, I mean, the business lessons. I don't know that there's been a lot of business lessons as much as I've just learned some lessons from this. And the first one I've been saying from day one, which is, you know, this pandemic has been incredibly humbling. You know, as a CEO of a company, you kind of wake up every morning, knowing which way you're going and what you're trying to do. And this thing is just kind of taking you sideways. Like on any given day, you know, you're trying to respond to the public health concerns, you're trying to address your employees, you know, the issues your employees are bringing up and, and sometimes you just don't have a good answer. And that's kind of a, as a CEO, that's not a place you like to be very often because we like to think of ourselves as being all known and omnipresent, and all that other crap. So it has been a humbling experience. What I will say is, is it's taught me It taught us as a company to be flexible, and responsive. You know, we had an incredible pandemic plan that was built, I think, for the avian flu, which was, what 10 years ago, you know, eight years ago. So you have this plan, and then you have to sort of change it to reflect the new pandemic. And the good news is we had the plan to work through and we were able to adapt this plan to reflect the day to day and on the on the ground realities. We're able to execute to it so. But that flexibility was paramount, particularly earlier on as you're trying to figure this thing out. And you know, we all spent far too much time watching TV and listening to the doomsayers in the media who are predicting, you know, the end of civilization as we know it. Some of that's kind of terrifying, but at the same time, you'll learn to block some of that crap out. So that was, that was a lesson learned. Another lesson we learned was that leadership matters. Look, I've taken decisions as part of this whole pandemic, which have not won me a lot of friends. You know, I don't apologize for those decisions. I think there are the right decisions. But that's what I get paid to do. You know, I'm the CEO of the company, and they pay me to sort of make those decisions. Conversely, as I've seen, these decisions and other decisions that get made cascade through the organization, you know, you can you can see who the leaders of the organization are. And that's both rewarding and fulfilling, but also sometimes it's a bit disappointing when you see people that you expect to step up and do something and they don't, for whatever reason, and sometimes there are good reasons why they don't so I shouldn't it's not criticism as much as it's a statement or an observation. third, or fourth, where I am communication, I mean, the old adage that you can never over communicate is so very, very true -communication with staff stakeholders with your customers. As we've gone through this pandemic, we have tried our very best to sort of communicate with everybody, as often as possible. If I just take staff as an example, you know, when we made the decision to sort of bring staff back sort of end of July, on the in the blue team / orange team kind of rotational piece, you know, we write open and said, just send it if you've got questions or concerns, send them to us. And we'll answer your questions. And we post those questions. And we posted those answers. And after about 50 questions, you realize that they're asking the same question, they're just asking it in a different way. And that's not coming from a place of malice, it's actually coming from a place of anxiety, they're trying to understand why the decision has been made. And, and so you know, we just kept answering the question, and we kept you kept giving them the same answer. And I think that helped. I mean, don't get me wrong, I think there are still employees that were terrified, coming back to the office. And hopefully, they've since learned that the office is not a bad place to be, it's actually quite safe. But yeah, that level of communication and same with our customers. And, you know, the frustration for me is that is our customers who may or may not be struggling with COVID, with as a result of the pandemic to pay their bills. You know, all I really all you really want them to do is to reach out and call us and talk to us. And if they do, then we can put them into a plan or a process that allows him to sort of manage those bills. Because again, the worst thing in the world for me is to see somebody paying their credit card using the credit card as opposed to us putting them on a payment plan. So it's just that constant communication. And then the last one, which last lesson I've learned, and I think we will collectively learn is that as much as this pandemic has been about physical health and the physical well-being of people and employees and the citizens of Ottawa, it's the mental health aspect, that's going to be the lingering legacy of this thing. I just don't think we have a handle on what the mental health impacts will be. When we get back to if we get back to what the new normal looks like, you know, forcing kids to separate from their friends, forcing families apart during the holidays, those are sorts of things that are just really difficult to imagine from a mental health perspective. And I think, you know, full credit to the Royal in the team they have, but I think they're going to be busy going forward.   Dan Seguin  47:55 Yeah, it's going to leave a mark for sure. How is your utility working to tightly manage capital and operating expenses? In this new rate sensitive and revenue challenged world? And post pandemic, as the economy begins to revitalize, are you expecting a need to address a backlog of critical activities and capital investment projects?   Bryce Conrad  48:25 So let me answer the second part of the question first. So the short answer is I don't expect that there'll be much of a backlog when we get back to sort of the full spender the burn rate, I think we've credited the operations team, they've done an amazing job of, you know, they took a couple weeks to figure out how to do the business safely and efficiently when the pandemic struck. And but man, they've been burning, they've been going full steam since then. So I give them full credit. So I don't expect a backlog per se. You know, if you look, if you listen to the Government of Canada, and the most recent economic statement, there seems to be a fairly significant amount of stimulus funding on them coming forward, I think in the next couple years, so I actually expect will be probably busier than ever, because, you know, every time you resurface a road or do something to a road or a transit system, I mean, you're talking about there's an impact on us as the as utility, so we're involved. So I expect will be busier than ever. But going back to the first part, you know, the rate sensitive and revenue challenged, which I think is absolutely true. And again, I'm not you know, hindsight is 2020 and I'm not looking for anybody to sort of throw flowers our way but, you know, we kind of saw the rate sensitivity. We've been watching it for like 10 years, right people have been frustrated by the rates in Ontario. And, you know, the inability to control those rates and have to affect the hydro rates of electricity rates have been a bit of a black box, I mean, they just not something you have line of sight to or control over in any real meaningful way. So we always saw the threat of kind of this rates sensitivity and revenue challenging. And we decided early on, to diversify our revenues away from the rate, the rate regulated assets. So yes, Hydro Ottawa limited is still a very large company in a very good company, and one that generates significant revenues. But we also made decisions to sort of expand and, and double down on our generating fleet. So we've taken our generating assets, and we've grown them by over 500%, in the past six years. Now, we didn't do that simply because we want to be good corporate citizens and be the largest custodian of green energy. We just want to own green energy projects in Canada, we want we did that because there was these assets are also quite lucrative. So, you know, as we got away from, you know, if you look at our balance sheet today, our balance sheet today is probably, you know, 75% regulated and 25%, unregulated. And if I go back, you know, years ago, it was probably 95/5. So by diversifying our revenues away from the regulated assets, we were able to sort of help manage some of that rate sensitivity and still demonstrate to the citizens of Ottawa who owned the company that we are a solid investment in a well-run company. So I think that's your answer, Dan.   Dan Seguin  51:47 Okay, Bryce, are you ready to close us off with some rapid fire questions?   Bryce Conrad  51:54 Yeah.   Dan Seguin  51:55 Okay. What is your favorite word?   Bryce Conrad  51:58 Right now? Joe Biden.   Dan Seguin  52:02 Okay. What is the one thing you can't live without?   Bryce Conrad  52:08 My family   Dan Seguin  52:10 What habit or hobby? Have you picked up during the shelter in place?   Bryce Conrad  52:15 Always been a big reader, but I forced myself to read at least an hour a day. So I trying to read 100 books this year. So I'm close. If anyone's interested, I've got some suggestions for you.   Dan Seguin  52:29 If you could have one superpower, what would it be?   Bryce Conrad  52:35 Either time travel or invisibility. One or the other? Time travel, so I could sort of be a better day trader. Okay, make some more money, invisibility, for obvious reasons.   Dan Seguin  52:49 Okay. If you could turn back time and talk to your 18 year old self? What would you tell them?   Bryce Conrad  52:57 Put the beer down and study harder.   Dan Seguin  52:59 Okay. And lastly, what do you currently find most interesting in your sector?   Bryce Conrad  53:05 You know, the energy industry as a general rule, and the utility sector specifically is just a constant. It's constantly changing. And you cannot be bored running a utility in Ontario. It's just not possible. And if you are, you're just crazy. So I think as you look forward, and I talked about earlier, you know, climate change and the impacts of climate change will have I think, as with a lot of things in life in society, the solutions to that are going to come at the local level. And you know, Hydro Ottawa, we're absolutely going to be at the heart of those efforts going forward. And I think it's just a fascinating blank canvas at the moment that I can't wait to be part of.   Dan Seguin  54:01 So cool, Bryce. Listen, we've reached the end of another episode of think energy podcast. Again, thank you so much for joining me today. I hope you had a lot of fun.   Bryce Conrad  54:10 Thanks, Dan. Appreciate it!   Dan Seguin  54:12 Thanks. Thank you for joining us today. I truly hope you enjoyed this episode of ThinkEnergy podcasts. For past episodes. Make sure you visit our website hydroottawa.com/podcast. Lastly, if you found value in this podcast, be sure to subscribe. Anyway, this podcast is a wrap. Cheers, everyone.

Diversity and inclusion are key drivers of innovation and success in the workplace. So, in such an innovative field like renewable energy, how can the industry attract talent? Joanna Osawe, President & CEO of Women in Renewable Energy (WIRE) shares the mission behind her organization as well as what WIRE is doing to support women seeking education and employment in the renewable energy sector. Related Content & Links: www.womeninrenewableenergy.ca WiRE Report: Navigating COVID19 & The Future of Energy: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/524b6ff3e4b030f838029610/t/5f733e81a472ac56517dc033/1601388165792/FutureofEnergy_Report_WiRE.pdf Follow WiRE on www.Twitter/WiRE_Canada www.linkedin.com/company/women-in-renewable-energy-wire www.instagram.com/wire_canada/ https://www.facebook.com/WomenInRE   Transcript: Dan Seguin  00:02 Hey, everyone, welcome back. This is the ThinkEnergy podcast. RESPECT, nine to five, I will survive. Besides being some of my fave tunes, there's a reason why I'm mentioning these female empowerment songs today. Why are people always surprised to find out that I'm a Gloria Gaynor and Aretha Franklin fan? the renewable energy sector is growing. And the jobs are, to say the least exciting and interesting from wind turbine and solar technicians to a wide cross section of other technical and professional engineers and geotechnical careers. Canada's renewable energy industry is accelerating. And there's a lot of quality careers emerging, particularly in STEM. That's the field of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. According to the Canadian Renewable Energy Association, there are currently more than 300,000 people employed in Canada's clean energy sector. And it's continuing to grow by 5% a year. So if projections are correct, there will be more than half a million Canadians employed in the clean energy sector by 2031 side that isn't moving as fast, however, is the number of women filling these key roles. Right now. The renewable energy industry employs about 32% of women, but most are in administrative positions. We know that the energy sector remains one of the least gender diverse industries, with women making up only 22% of the workers overall. We also know that gender diverse workplaces thrive, and are more innovative and financially successful. So in such an innovative field, like renewable energy, how can the industry attract talent? Well, some barriers that women faced as identified by electricity, Human Resources Canada include discrimination, a lack of mentorship, and a non inclusive workplace culture. In order to power the future, and the country's renewable energy projects, these systemic barriers need to be addressed. And it can't come fast enough. With half of the experienced engineering workforce retiring in the next decade, there's a skill shortage on the horizon, but also a huge opportunity for change. The goal of renewable energy essentially, is to make the future better for everyone. Isn't that what the industry should stand for today as well? So here is today's big question, what is being done to boost women's renewable energy careers, from education to employment, in order to allow their talent to be fully realized? to shed some light on this, joining us today is Joanna Osawe, the President and CEO of women in renewable energy or wire. Welcome, Joanna. Are you ready to get started? Maybe you could begin by telling our listeners a bit about you and what drew you to the renewable energy sector. Joanna Osawe  04:22 So I started in the renewable sector, thanks to my mom and dad. My mom was a microbiologist and my father and mechanical engineer and through my childhood, they always promoted and really made sure that I was aware of STEM. And really what that meant. When I first started in the industry, as a matter of fact, I applied for a job that was a pharmaceutical job. And the recruiter actually, that met with me actually told me that I was there for a renewable position. And as a matter of fact, Daniel for two years prior to that I was looking to get into the sector. And this was really, you know, a huge eye opener for me. And that's when I began my career was with Gail force energy. And then it was bought out by AirTriCity and then bought out by Eon, which is the biggest private utility in the world based out of Dusseldorf, by then I had moved to Chicago. And, and, you know, really my career started when the renewable sector was very young and fresh back in the 1990s, you know, the generating coal plants are really the activity of the day, then we moved on into the year 2000s. And we saw that renewable sector, you know, started to really make an impact. Infrastructure, of course started to build up and mining took a dip. And really, you know, the activity of the day has been really to follow the market trends. And the renewable sector is something that I'm extremely passionate about. Dan Seguin  05:51 Cool, very nice journey. There's a line on your website that I really like, it's "WIRE is inclusive of all renewable energy technologies". Can you tell us about that line, the objectives of your organization? And why the focus on renewable energy versus the energy industry as a whole? Joanna Osawe  06:18 That's a great question. Thank you. So our mission is very simple. It's to advance the role and recognition of women in the energy sector. When I say when, because I started my career in the renewable sector. You know, WIRE is something that I'm very passionate about, especially the renewable side, however, we are all inclusive of all, every single type of energy. Anyone that is in the energy sector, there's a place for them to come and network with us to attend field trips, because most people don't know the difference is between a distribution line versus a transmission line. And the platform is really open to to anyone that has an interest and understanding more and getting educated. So our programming consists of networking, field trips, mentoring, speed, interviewing, student bursaries, we have a great awards program, we do blogs on different folks, we really work with indigenous community. So we're really impactful on a lot of different streams, and certainly, WIRE again, because I started my career in the renewables. And, and really, I wanted to focus on that, but we are inclusive of all different types of energies. Dan Seguin  07:29 Okay, Joanna, can you give us some examples of how your organization is closing the gap, and advancing the role and recognition of women in the sector? Joanna Osawe  07:42 Certainly, we offer a lot of mentorship, we also have networking events, I'll be bringing C suite speakers, where you know, they have the time to educate our participants, our stakeholders and what they do. And we have different  women that actually come in to us. Whether it's, you know, Michelle Brannigan from HRC, whether it's Jane Travers, from the Vice President of OPG, whether it's  Ayesha Sabouba from hydro one, I mean, we have such a plethora of amazing women in our sector. And we really highlight that, because, you know, the the energy sector is very complicated and complex sector. And it's really important to understand what an engineer does what a financier does what even an ornithologist, an archaeologist does. So it really molds everything together. Also on the gender gap, we definitely promote to support one another, and be able to be there. So we offer mentorship programs as well. And that's very important. We also work with students, because students are really the platform where they're able to elevate and really start looking into networking and understanding the energy sector. So we actually just started a student Harper student chapter at ontario Tech University. And this month, we're opening up at University of Windsor as well. Dan Seguin  09:04 Is it equally about creating a culture of belonging in the workplace, and the work organizations need to do to create welcoming, inclusive spaces? Joanna Osawe  09:19 So one is really about how we view it. It's that inclusivity it's about gender diversity and inclusion. And that means everyone here in Toronto, we have over 117 spoken languages. And we are so lucky here in Toronto, and in Canada, where we are a multicultural society. And I want to see this being inclusive of everyone. And when I mean everyone, men, women, LGBTQ to us, it's really about the diversity. I think that coming from different backgrounds and different cultures. The moment that we're seated at that executive board table, we actually are able to provide different solutions, because of our different backgrounds or different demographics, and I do believe that this is about inclusivity, that mostly about making sure that, that there's equality as well. Dan Seguin  10:12 Okay, how do you think we can attract the younger generation of girls to consider career paths and education in STEM? Can you also maybe talk about how you engage young women to think about careers in renewable energy as an exciting option? Joanna Osawe  10:32 So definitely, you know, for me, it started at home. And it was because of my parents, I think that STEM is something that even as a young child, they should be learning. We also have, like I just pointed out, you do have the student chapters now because it does give them a platform to be able to network with different people, and also be able to understand again, our industry, I think that definitely with when I was in university, we didn't have a WIRE or organization that actually helped me network. I think that the quicker that, you know, someone networks, the better off they are, because it is a very small industry, and everyone seems to know one another. I think that for children, again, there's different actually wire partners with a lot of different organizations. So there's one called skilled trades, or kick ass careers. And it's Jamie McMillan. And actually what she does, she goes to different elementary schools and high schools and actually talks about what skilled trades are, we partner with a lot of different organizations that also such as relay education that really educate children right into what they're doing. So I think it's very important to engage with partners for why or some parts, engage with different partners, that we can actually solidify our message together. And so people know that there are platforms that they can reach out. Dan Seguin  12:03 Okay, maybe you can expand on some of the barriers to entry for women in renewable in the renewable energy sector. Joanna, what advice do you have for a woman starting her career in renewable energy. Joanna Osawe  12:20 Um, I can only speak for myself. However, one of the things that when I was applying for jobs when I was my goodness, 23/24 i, there's jobs that I had no business applying for, and I've never boxed myself in, you know, requirements are there and qualifications, but I really bypass all those. And I truly wouldn't be where I am today, if it wasn't, you know, for the fact that I don't, I didn't check every single box. I think that apply for the jobs that, you know, you align with, apply for jobs that are not, you may not think they're attainable. And surprisingly, for me, it worked out. And but I also was never afraid of, of applying for jobs that were above me. And I think too often, we are segmented. And we need to check that box. So that's one advice as well. And also, you don't have to be an engineer to enter the renewable space. There's so many different opportunities, from data analysts to be an ornithologist to be an archaeologist to environmental assessments. I mean, you know, there's, there's just so many different ways that you can get engaged. So I'm not an engineer, and yet, you know, 15 plus years later, I'm sitting where I am. Dan Seguin  13:43 So you don't want you don't want to be afraid to step out of the box. Joanna Osawe  13:47 That's right. Dan Seguin  13:48 Yes. Okay. Um, well, I know that mentorship plays an important role in your organization, as you stated, what are your thoughts on how established women in the energy sector can play the role of a mentor for an upcoming generation? Joanna Osawe  14:08 Right now, I'm actually mentoring two different women, currently. One is with the Clean Energy Business Council out of Dubai, and we've partnered with them Women in clean energy, and it's a young lady that has just entered into the energy space. Another one that I mentoring is with Women for Climate which the City of Toronto has launched, and I'm mentoring this amazing young woman who's looking into sustainable textiles. And I really feel that it's important to mentor but even more importantly, to sponsor someone where you're actually taking them to that next level. I've been very fortunate in my career, that I had great male champions that believed in me and really sponsored me so to me mentorship and sponsorships are a little bit You know, I define them differently a little bit. Dan Seguin  15:04 Okay. Can you talk a bit, a bit more about your programming? What makes WIRE unique? And in ways in what ways can you create that greater awareness in the industry, and about the exciting career opportunities that actually exist? Joanna Osawe  15:25 Certainly, when I started, WIRE, this was back in 2012. And then we launched in 2013, we had started just in Toronto, we're now in every single province in Canada, as well as the territories, we have expanded in the Middle East. We are now in Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkey, Jordan, and UAE. And we actually get invited to these countries. And the reason that we're there is because Canadian embassies, I work with the Canadian embassies and consulates. And because our Prime Minister's vision is really aligned with WIRE's vision as well to make sure that we're advancing the role and recognition of women. So therefore, I like to talk about local, so be global, but act local, so some of the programming here in Canada may not necessarily coincide with Turkey, or in Jordan. So we have to be very mindful and sensitive to different demographics. When I presented or I gave my intervention of the G7, two years ago on gender diversity, the G7 countries also had, you know, have requested that we enter the market. So at this point, we are working with them as well. Some of our programming, like I said, In Canada, include some networking, which is extremely important, because I do believe, and I'm using Annette Verschuren, the president ceo, quote from from NRstor, "your network is your net worth". And I think that that's a very good, fantastic quote. And also, you know, with, with the networking, it's huge. The field trips are extremely important. We've had hundreds of them, we actually did last year with OPG at the SIR Adam back generating station, we've been to the IEA. So we've been to wind farms, solar farms, energy storage projects. So the list goes on and on. And this is open to all. So just because some of the programming is for women, you may think because of WIRE, however it is open to all. We like we have student bursaries. So students can attend conferences, because when I was a student, I can tell you, I did not have $2,000 to attend a conference. So we definitely provide that platform. We also, we also do speed mentoring, speed interviewing. So we work with different companies that are looking for talent pools that we can actually provide them so and it really diminishes the hours for human resources and they're able to shortlist really great candidates. The speed mentoring we do at different conferences we do with different companies as well, we're repair of course decision makers with students or emerging professionals. We work with indigenous communities, we do blogs, we do awards, I love our awards section because we really highlight women and champion them so we have Woman of the Year award which we presented Afro yearly woman have went which was with Can Ria, which is now Can Ria woman a solar can't see it, but now can we can see I've joined forces, they're called now Can Ria we do? Women have hydro with water power, Canada, and right now we are working with for the second year in a row with NRcan, C3C and IEA to provide organizational awards and, and also individual awards. So this was actually presented this year at the G 20. And in August, so we're consistently growing on programs and looking at different ways to make sure that we're outreaching. As mentioned earlier, we definitely have opened up student chapters. So we definitely want to make sure that students have are able to, you know, leave on with us and connect with us. And one thing that's very unique about WIRE is that we are extremely welcoming. And one thing that I even when I was younger and I did attend certain workshops or events, I would be very uncomfortable and uneasy. However I think once again, we are very open minded and we're always inclusive, and that is the way that you know, that's the feedback we get. Dan Seguin  19:32 Okay, and by the way, I will be testing your speed interview skills shortly. Okay, so how has the pandemic changed your landscape? Maybe you can elaborate on some of the impacts and how your sector has adapted. Joanna Osawe  19:55 Certainly, and I'll share this report with you we actually WIRE published a report it was called navigating COVID-19 and the future of energy. So we actually interviewed 35 plus CEOs and VPS, across Canada. And this was men, women and all that we interviewed anonymously. And, you know, it was very interesting to hear from the east coast to Central Canada to the west coast, the differences, and you know, the similarities as well. And for WIRE, but that meant is that we have to start virtually, and me not being extremely technical when it comes to technology. I have amazing volunteers, amazing support system that really came forward to assist make sure that we are still able to be outspoken, we're still able to reach out to to our stakeholders, our participants. And what's changes now that is become more on a global scale. So we're actually connecting to WIRE, Canada, two WIRE Turkey, to WIRE Azerbaijan. So I think it's really actually quite impactful. And I think that that's actually become more accessible in a lot of different ways. So that's what's changed for us. Dan Seguin  21:10 Okay, maybe you can share the link with me, and I'll put it in our show notes. So listeners can actually look into it. Joanna Osawe  21:17 Yes, perfect. Dan Seguin  21:18 Okay, so looking to a post pandemic horizon, what are some of the hard business lessons your sector was exposed to, or opportunities that were found, Joanna Osawe  21:32 I'm so used to attending events and being extremely social, and really networking and traveling. So that came to a full stop. That really impacted me personally. Because I'm so used to being around people and doing workshops, like I said, or being a panelist or a moderator. So that really stopped. You know, we were supposed to be in Chile presenting the the C3 awards this year, I mean, there's a lot of exciting opportunities or travel opportunities that we were wanting to expand as well with WIRE. So that really changed. Another thing that changes, obviously, now we're connecting through virtual platforms at all times. And I'm sure that there's a lot of zoom fatigue these days. And I think that's become a dip that's become very interesting to speak to people through your computer rather than personally, because being face to face has a different feel to it. So that's changed. However, I've adapted, you know, I think that as time passes you sort of mold into what's happened. And you know, you're, we have to be safe, and we have to be cautious. And, you know, I think that until it is safe, so we are going to protect the community at WIRE and everyone else. Dan Seguin  22:58 So, Joanna, would you say that this pandemic is an opportunity for a green recovery for the planet? Are you encouraged by the federal government's recent $10 billion infrastructure investments to support renewable energy? Joanna Osawe  23:17 Absolutely, I think the pandemic has definitely impacted climate change in a good way in a positive way. I mean, we can definitely see there was less cars driving I mean, there's, it's I think that is really has changed the landscape or for our environment, which is a positive thing. I'm sure you saw this as well, in Venice, there are dolphins found swimming, right. And we've seen such a great impact on air pollution as well. As far as this throne speech, I am so proud of our government for actually allocating the $10 billion because Canada is a leader in the renewable sector, and I'm very proud that our government is supporting and continuing to work with, you know, with our sector, I think that's a very important sector and we need to recognize that so I definitely applaud them for doing so. Dan Seguin  24:11 Okay, Joanna, are you ready to close us off with some rapid fire questions? Joanna Osawe  24:18 Yes. Dan Seguin  24:19 Okay. What is your favorite word? Joanna Osawe  24:22 gratefulness / being grateful Dan Seguin  24:25 Good, very good one. What is the one thing you can't live without? Joanna Osawe  24:31 Chocolate Dan Seguin  24:36 What habit or hobby Have you picked up during shelter in place? Joanna Osawe  24:42 I'm a terrible cook so I've been trying to cook. Dan Seguin  24:48 If you could have one superpower, what would it be Joanna Osawe  24:52 To fly! Dan Seguin  24:53 Okay, if you could turn back time and talk to your 18 year old self What would you tell her? Joanna Osawe  25:02 Not to worry. Dan Seguin  25:06 And lastly, what do you currently find most interesting in your sector? Joanna Osawe  25:12 My colleagues that have become friends. And also, you know, the energy sector for me has always not been a job in our career. It's been a lifestyle. So I think that's the way I view it. That's what's really exciting to me. Dan Seguin  25:24 Very nice. Well, Joanna, we've reached the end of another episode of The ThinkEnergy podcast last question for you. How can our listeners learn more about you? And women in renewable energy? How can they connect? Joanna Osawe  25:40 Please email us at info@womeninrenewableenergy.ca. Visit our website at womeninrenewableenergy.ca. You can follow us on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, of course, and subscribe to our newsletter. We have great events coming up on a monthly basis, sometimes two or three as well. So we welcome you and thank you. Dan Seguin  26:02 Again, thank you so much for joining me today. I hope you had a lot of fun. Joanna Osawe  26:06 I sure did. Thanks, Dan. This is really great. Dan Seguin  26:11 Thank you for joining us today. I truly hope you enjoyed this episode of The ThinkEnergy podcast. For past episodes, make sure you visit our website hydroottawa.com/podcast. Lastly, if you found value in this podcast, be sure to subscribe. Anyway, this podcast is a wrap. Cheers, everyone.

Does energy storage hold great potential for a Canada in which wind and solar power could dominate new power plant additions and gradually overtake other sources of electricity? How can energy storage make up for the current limitations of renewables? Find out if energy storage, particularly electricity storage, is the missing piece in the renewables jigsaw as Justin Rangooni, Executive director of Energy Storage Canada, shares his perspective. Related Content & Links: https://hydroottawa.com/ Websites: https://www.energystoragecanada.org  Twitter: @EnergystorageON LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/justin-rangooni-5063b542/   Transcript: Dan Seguin  00:42 Hey, everyone, welcome back. This is the ThinkEnergy podcast. If you're following energy trends around the world, you've likely heard about energy storage. It's a big topic, and there's a lot to unpack. While there are many types of systems to store energy, I think it's easiest to think of energy storage as the battery that you use to capture energy when it's produced, so you can use it at another time, perhaps when energy isn't available, like during a power outage. With renewable energy continuing to grow in Canada, where does energy storage fit? You have to wonder if energy storage will become the new power plants of the future. One thing is certain energy storage will play an important role in the future supply mix for electricity, most obviously, in creating a more flexible and reliable grid system. For example, when there is more supply than demand, such as during the night when energy costs are lower and power plants continue to operate, the surplus electricity generation can be sent to power energy storage systems, instead of being sold at a loss or going to waste. While wind and solar are great. They can only produce energy at a certain time. This reality has been a barrier for mass integration into modern electricity grids. Since the constant availability of reliable power is paramount to the country and our economy, a complimentary technology like energy storage could help fill the gap for managing today's renewables. Synergies between wind energy, solar energy and energy storage also mean that these technologies can provide a broader range of services to the grid when used in a coordinated manner that reduce overall electricity systems costs, such as building new and expensive generating plants. But at what scale are we at for energy storage today? And where is it headed in the near future? Is there a strategy and evidence that energy storage is a solution we're looking for? In short, where is Canada at on the energy storage journey to adoption? This leads me to today's big question: is energy storage the missing piece in the renewables jigsaw puzzle? And the solution for Canada's energy needs? Joining me today is a very special guest. Justin Rangooni, the executive director at energy storage Canada, who's here to help us unbox the energy storage mystery. Justin, welcome to the ThinkEnergy podcast. Justin, can you tell us a bit about yourself? What energy storage is and what your organization Energy Storage Canada does what it's all about? Justin Rangooni  04:04 Of course, Daniel, and thanks for having me on the chat. Always glad to chat with you and see our friends at Hydro Ottawa. Again, well, Energy Storage Canada is the National voice for energy storage. We are the only Association dedicated to advancing energy storage in the country. We have over 60 members from across the energy storage value chain from the biggest global companies to the most innovative startups. And we develop policy positions, advocate and educate decision makers and host educational and networking opportunities through webinars and our annual conference. We're basically energy storage 24 / 7, 365 days a year. Dan Seguin  04:43 Cool. Okay, at a high level, what are we talking about in terms of large scale or grid scale energy storage? What sizes are available? How long can the energy be stored for and is the goal to power cities for days or weeks? Justin Rangooni  05:02 Not a good question again, what makes energy storage so unique is the varying degrees of sizes, capabilities and technologies. In terms of larger grid scale, you know, we're talking about projects in the hundreds up to 1000 megawatts. But energy storage projects can be in the kilowatts as well, it all depends on the project and where it's located. And depending on the discharge rate of how much energy is injected back into the grid, it could be a couple hours or even more, again, all depends on the technology and the capabilities. And the goal for the sector is really to optimize generation, optimize distribution and transmission assets, provide the grid with reliable service and support the goal of affordability for all ratepayers. Dan Seguin  05:45 Okay, Tesla made a splash back in 2015, with its announcement of the power wall system, essentially small scale energy storage for homes, has there been any movement in this area? Justin Rangooni  06:00 So that is definitely the wave of the future as customers demand more choice and control of their energy needs. So small scale energy storage for homes will be getting there, especially as you see increased prevalence of electric vehicles and rooftop solar systems, residential storage systems, you know, as using the EV battery itself, and in hibernating with the source solar system would be in lockstep. What you're seeing a lot now in Ontario is behind the meter storage devices for large industrial customers, which are helping manage their consumption. So it's getting there. But right now, it's not quite but we are getting there into the small scale. Dan Seguin  06:41 Okay. Justin, can you explain what the clean energy goals are for the energy storage sector? What types of policies at the municipal provincial federal level need to be in place to succeed? Justin Rangooni  06:57 Sure, so our clean energy goals are to optimize cleaner sources of generation and to help with the energy transition are such talking really, a lot of other provinces are still relying on coal especially, and planning the transition away. So what we say is that we can optimize your existing cleaner assets, variable generation or otherwise, by having storage within the system. So you may you do not necessarily need to build new, dirtier forms of generation, you can use energy storage, to twin with your cleaner sources actually have. And in terms to do that, we're talking about removal of barriers, market opportunities, and just the general sense that energy storage resources are a mainstream tool for system operators to use. Dan Seguin  07:44 Moving on to the question, Justin, on how can Canada unlock the potential of the energy storage? Justin Rangooni  07:54 And that is the key question. And it was the focus of our annual conference recently. And in fact, it was the title of a valuation study we did for Ontario that we released this summer, which concluded that if the province had at least 1000 megawatts of energy storage enabled in the province, over the next decade, ratepayers would enjoy a net savings of over $2 billion. And to unlock that potential, again, it comes down to the removal of regulatory barriers, to fully enable energy storage, and its value offerings, and the creation of market opportunities. And again, for system operators to start to see things a little differently, see energy storage as a tool to be used. And that can be applied to the distribution side as well, that instead of traditional poles and wires, or traditional generation sources that you look at energy storage, which is a bit of a jack of all trades, or a Swiss Army knife to provide various service offerings for you. And so it's starting to see things a little differently with energy storage index. Dan Seguin  08:56 Now, the Canadian government recently announced a $10 billion infrastructure investment plan and specifically mentioned it would support both renewable and energy storage. What are your thoughts on the government plans? Justin Rangooni  09:16 So we were very supportive of that we're supportive of anything that comes from the federal government in terms of helping with the economics of energy storage projects or helping facilitate energy storage projects across the country. So with the announcement from the Canada's infrastructure bank, which is about a $2.5 billion funding initiative, we are very supportive and we look forward to working with the CIV on details. And we're looking forward to an upcoming federal budget which we hope will include even more funding opportunities, grants, and other types of programs for our energy storage going forward. Dan Seguin  09:51 Okay, what has been the impact of the pandemic on energy on the energy storage industry? Justin Rangooni  10:00 Well as with everything in every sector, it's the uncertainty that it has caused with what decisions can be made by the government decision makers that could have unintended consequences. For instance, in Ontario, their decision earlier this year to place a hiatus on the ICI program, the industrial conservation initiative, we have what it calls an unintended consequence of the decision because I put a lot of projects that were about to be built behind the meter on hold. So we understand what, you know, the challenges the government is facing to make decisions around the pandemic. We just hope that I think it's just it's stressed the importance of communication to understand how everybody could be affected by those decisions. So we are working with the government to ensure that no, we're here talk to us, we're here to help. Let's try to find a nice path forward to help with the economic recovery coming out of this pandemic, hopefully, in a not so distant future. Dan Seguin  10:57 Okay. Do you see the development and scaling of energy storage solution being imperative to successful transformation of the energy sector and the electricity grid? If so, how do you see energy storage accelerating in the years to come? Justin Rangooni  11:19 I think it's the latter question that is really key. Because we're seeing energy storage accelerating throughout the energy system across Canada. And we're talking about from residential use electric vehicles use as a battery to the continued use of behind the meter for large for large customers, more hybrid projects to better optimize current assets to transmission and distribution, deferral. So we're really looking at the entire gamut for energy storage is role to be played. And it really again depends on those market opportunities and removing barriers to really unlock energy storage's potential. Dan Seguin  11:52 Given the grid expertise of utilities, what role will they play in the energy storage field? Justin Rangooni  12:00 So we see that as the role being absolutely critical, as utility or utility members that we have ourselves we view they view energy storage as an essential tool as part of their system planning. And we believe all distributors and all utilities across the country will do as well. And we expect to see the only enhancement of energy storage resources as  a tool as an alternative to traditional poles and wires for utilities, which can better optimize utilities, investments in their poles and wires, and help with ratepayers affordability issues as well, by using storage, which is a cheaper alternative, in many cases to just building the status quo. Dan Seguin  12:40 Okay, Justin, it's now time to pull up your crystal ball with plans to further electrify public transportation and promote urban intensification, do you think that utilities are likely to account for a large share of battery energy storage in Canada? Justin Rangooni  12:58 So I'll get the crystal ball. I think the use of energy storage resources and the distribution level is inevitable. And that's a good thing. So I think we'll be seeing utilities utilizing energy storage resources in front and behind the meter in much greater share than they are doing now. I think with the removal of regulatory barriers, and just a more general sense that seeing energy storage as a tool for utilities to use, I think we're going to see a lot greater share. And that's a really good thing for the utilities, ratepayers and the system as a whole. Dan Seguin  13:32 Now, the next question is a mouthful, the economic value of energy storage is closely tied to other major trends impacting today's Power System, most notably the increasing penetration of wind and solar generation. How does battery storage help make better use of electricity system assets? Can it defer or even eliminate unnecessary investments in capital intensive assets, like building new and expensive generating plants to meet our country's forecasted energy needs? Justin Rangooni  14:08 So yeah, that was a mouthful. And I think the response is really short. I think, yes, it can. And it's one of the major value propositions of energy storage. Depending on the business case, and again, the technology you're using beyond just batteries, because energy storage could be compressed air facilities could be flywheels, pumped storage, and thermal storage. There are many different technologies available. And depending on the business case being used, you could see it as a deferment, or in place of building traditional generation, or, the deferment of just building traditional poles and wires, for instance, it all depends on the business case, but again, because it's a tool, that's what we're trying to say is have that as a tool so you can see if it is the better alternative. Dan Seguin  14:56 Now, are you ready to close us off with some rest rapid fire questions. Justin Rangooni  15:01 Of course! Those are my favorite. Dan Seguin  15:04 Okay, well, what is your favorite word? Justin Rangooni  15:08 Cookies Dan Seguin  15:10 Okay, what is the one thing you can't live without? Justin Rangooni  15:15 Cookies? Dan Seguin  15:18 Okay, what habit or hobby? Have you picked up during shelter-in-place? Justin Rangooni  15:25 Well, it would be cutting my own hair and cutting my son's hair. Okay, I thought you were going to say baking cookies. Oh, baking cookies. There you go. Okay. Dan Seguin  15:36 If you could have one superpower, what would it be? Justin Rangooni  15:40 Oh, I would say flying, we can skip the airport lines. That would be the best. Dan Seguin  15:45 If you could turn back time and talk to your 18 year old self. What would you tell him? Justin Rangooni  15:52 Well, I would say get your sleep in now. Because with three kids that is definitely in short supply. Dan Seguin  16:00 Good, good one. And lastly, what do you currently find most interesting in your sector? Justin Rangooni  16:08 Well, I think the most interesting thing is the endless opportunities for innovation and creativity. Energy Storage being a tool that can be used by utilities like customers by the system operators. The possibilities are endless with energy storage. That's what makes the sector so exciting. Dan Seguin  16:28 Well, Justin, we've reached the end of another episode, I think energy podcasts. Last question for you. How can our listeners learn more about you and energy storage Canada? How can they connect? Justin Rangooni  16:43 That is the best question of the day. They can look at our website at energystoragecanada.org all the information is there of who we are what we do. Joining up for memberships Of course, you can see our all our publications and our submissions. All the and there's a lot of great information up there. So check out energystoragecanada.org. Dan Seguin  17:05 Cool. Again, thank you for joining me today. I hope you had a lot of fun. Justin Rangooni  17:09 Sure did, Daniel. Thanks so much for the opportunity. Dan Seguin  17:14 Thank you for joining us today. I truly hope you enjoyed this episode of The ThinkEnergy podcast. For past episodes, make sure you visit our website hydroottawa.com/podcast. Lastly, if you found value in this podcast, be sure to subscribe. Anyway, this podcast is a wrap. Cheers, everyone.

As electric vehicles (EVs) earn the spotlight as an impactful step towards environmental sustainability, what can municipalities, electric utilities and oil companies do to support a true EV movement in Canada? Jim Pegg, Director of Infrastructure Product and Service at Envari Energy Solutions, shares his expertise on the infrastructure (i.e. charging stations) and services (i.e. electrical supply) that will be necessary to encourage EV adoption while ensuring a smooth transition. Related Content & Links: Websites: Envari - https://www.envari.com/ Hydro Ottawa - https://hydroottawa.com/ Social media: Twitter: @Envari LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/envari/ Transcript: Dan Seguin  00:43 Hey, everyone, welcome back. This is the ThinkEnergy podcast. According to the US Department of Energy, electric cars can be traced back to the early 1800s while horses and buggies were still the primary mode of transportation, inventors in Hungary, the Netherlands, and the US were creating some of the first small scale electric cars between 1828 and 1835. By the turn of the century, in early 1900s, electric vehicles accounted for a third of all vehicles on the road in the US. So what happened? Now, another century later, electricity is finally on track to become the fuel of the future that will move both people and goods sustainably and environmentally around the country. And nationwide, EV fast charging network was only introduced in December of 2019 by Petro Canada. It consisted of a network that boasts 51 fast chargers at their stations as far east as Halifax, Nova Scotia, and as far west as Victoria, British Columbia. EV drivers now have access to stations located all along the Trans-Canada highway, making a coast to coast track achievable. Other major players are getting into the game with Canadian tire committing to 300 charging stations spread over 90 locations across Canada. Wow. So no more range anxiety? This is great news because consumers rank not having enough accessible charging stations as a third more serious barrier to an EV purchase, behind price and long range travel. Despite this obstacle, EV sales have continued to rise. But it's clear that to support that growth, we need to roll out charging stations at municipal, provincial and federal levels is the key to bolster rates of EV adoption. More EV charging infrastructure in urban and rural areas? Will better infrastructure increased consumer confidence in electrical vehicles. From a local perspective, what are Canadian municipalities doing to advance their local infrastructure to successfully accommodate EV charging networks? Here's today's big question. Are electric utilities and oil company’s two industries in unique positions to help build a true EV movement in Canada? The former controls electricity distribution networks in the province and municipalities while the latter already operates strategically located fuel stations for internal combustion vehicles. Joining me today is a very special guest, Jim Pegg, Director of infrastructure products and services at Envari energy solutions, who is here to answer these big and small EV questions for us. Jim, can you tell us a bit about Envari and your role specifically, as it relates to electric vehicles and EV infrastructure and charging stations? Second, as an energy management company, can you expand on your strategic position to catalyze this shift to electric mobility? Jim Pegg  04:25 Essentially, Envari is a diversified energy solutions company. We're a team of engineers’ project managers that problem solve and help businesses and governments implement innovative electrical, mechanical lighting-related projects. As a competitive affiliate of Hydro Ottawa, we're trusted experts in energy efficiency, sustainability, as well as asset management. Our clients’ needs take center stage for us, and we're committed we're very committed to our customer success. Our goal is to help them save energy, you know, reduce emissions and identify areas of poor performance as a good example. Before they have a chance to erode essentially, their bottom line, we're trying to help them avoid those situations. We deliver energy projects from start to finish. So we're concept to commissioning type organization. We provide expert advice, we leverage our buying power, complementing and supplementing our projects team. In terms of their ability to deliver outstanding results and performance results, I'd say we're recognized in the industry for always protecting our customers’ best interests, and adhering to the highest standards of quality and reliability. And obviously, very importantly, safety. Dan Seguin  05:43 Thanks. Studies show that public charging will be even more important in the near future, particularly in the next decade. What strategies should utilities and municipalities be looking to adopt to ensure we're prepared? Jim Pegg  06:01 Well, I mean, that's a great question. And I think we very much agree that public charging is becoming more and more common right across North America, we sit on various committees, and we see this discussion is really starting to catch fire. Example, you know, now there was more than 1000 public charging stations over in BC I think. And, you know, people are using them for various types of experiences, whether it's just popping out to the mall or range extending, because they want to head out to the cottage or go for a road trip, especially with COVID going on, people are getting a lot more in country traveling. And, and so it's certainly becoming more and more of a topic. I'd say with utilities, Dan, it's all about capacity, which typically isn't an issue for something like a level two charger, but certainly becomes a big part of the conversation for level three fast chargers, which can draw significantly more power, you know, typically a level three, fast charger, you know, you get into the 50 kilowatt range, but they're obviously getting bigger and bigger and faster and faster. also important to note that car technology out there is changing too, right? Different electric vehicles can accept that different charge at different rates. So you might plug in one vehicle to a charger, and it takes a certain amount of time to charge and another vehicle might take a different amount of time to charge. So for utilities, again, they're looking at standards, you know, looking at related to charger connections, details, like your metering requirements, and how they can work with different vendors and manufacturers to do things as simple as mounting the meter to an actual public charging station, versus having to have a separate, you know, installation post or something like that, those little details will actually go a long way with really helping to enable that technology to get out there and, and not run into those types of roadblocks. I say for the longer term impact of charging, it's going to become more of a key system planning piece. So working to understand that the penetration of these chargers, and that related infrastructure. The impacts of large fleets converting to electric vehicles is going to be a big, big discussion point as well, you know, municipalities, I think all across North America are looking at their fleets. And if converting to electric makes sense to them, as you know, a lot of places that have declared climate emergencies. And a big way to support the effort to reduce emissions, obviously, is converting to electric vehicles and to do so that infrastructure becomes a key part of that play. So I think  those are big parts of the conversation for utilities, other technologies are starting to come into play like energy storage, energy storage acts a lot like a distributed energy resource. So over the last 10 or 15 years, utilities have been really making a big shift to having more distributed generation in their system versus the sort of large generation pumping in I've got generation all over the place. Well, batteries and chargers come into that situation not to and it's more deemed as an energy resource facility is what they would call it now because of battery can operate a lot like a like a generator. So utilities are having to look at all these different factors and take those into consideration with connection processes, and working with customers to try and make it as simple as possible for the customer. Because at the end of the day, there can be some very technical pieces to it, you know, you can always dive into the weeds of this stuff. But our goal is to make these chargers available to the public and to make these things accessible, so that so that we can get this infrastructure in place. So I think utilities have certainly started the conversation and are working to go a long way with trying to help streamline those processes. Municipalities are a big part of that as well. They're doing a great job. We've spoken with many families that are taking a real good hard look at their fleets as well as public charging offerings. And  I think a big part of what municipalities are doing is trying to look at standards for, you know, understanding optimal locations for, for EV chargers for the public what makes sense, as well as working with their local utility that was a huge part of the discussion, having those early conversations, because you want to avoid things that, you know, one group may know is a roadblock. And they might say one site is better than another. And you can really avoid going too far down a trail that has a dead end to it, if you have that conversation early. And I think I know here in Ottawa, specifically the utilities do an excellent job of, of being part of that conversation and Envari is, is well positioned to support those conversations as well. So those are, those are some of the big things. Another big thing that municipalities are trying to do is look at their fleet turnover. So you know, sort of the natural expiration date of their different fleets. So if you look at transit fleets, or, or even, you know, things like bylaw type fleets or utility type vehicles, things like that, where there is a natural life expectancy to those vehicles, the best time to convert it to an electric vehicle is when that asset is due for replacement. Rather than replacing it early and sort of leaving an asset stranded, you can take advantage of that replacement cycle and sort of naturally come up with a plan that sort of fits in in terms of replacing those vehicles. And then along with that, you can then do sort of a bit of a work back plan to say, Okay, if I'm going to have this many electric vehicles come into my system at this point in time, I need to have the infrastructure that's going to support that. And that's where that's where the planning all the work comes into place and to getting those things set up. Dan Seguin  11:49 Okay. Great segue here. Now, most are familiar with level one, level two chargers, as most are applicable for homes and workplaces. But when time matters, like on a highway or public parking lots, a level three charger, also known as a direct current fast charger may be better suited, wondering if you could explain the differences and their impact on the grid? Jim Pegg  12:18 Sure, I can take a stab at that for sure. So, you know, this is a question that comes up quite often. And I think it's, it's a good one to ask. So absolutely a level one charger is essentially a wall outlet, 120 volt system, what people would find in our house we could plug your coffeemaker into. And then if you get into the level two world level two chargers a little bit faster. So it's a bit more power output. And you know, with a level one charger, you might be in eight to 12 hours to essentially trickle charge that battery with a level two charger, you've got a bit more power, a bit more flow behind that electricity pushing into the car. And you can charge your car and more of the four hour range or in some cases three and a half to four hours. Again, cars provide a bit of variance there, that I would relate to more of a 240 volt system. So if someone's thinking, you know, an electric baseboard heater in your house has 240 volts, it's got a bit more power to it. That's kind of the idea behind an electric vehicle level two charger, when you get into a level three charger, there's a bit of a range there. So of level three chargers sort of started out as the 50 kilowatt charger. And that became sort of the most common level three charger. In that case, you're getting into a much more power, higher voltages in air essentially, again, same idea as the one to two step, it's a much bigger step to the level three, and you're pushing that power into the vehicles quite a bit faster. And the power requirements are higher. Level three chargers have a range, you know, there's 50 kilowatts, and I've seen them up to 150 kilowatts. And for fleet charging, it goes up and up and up from there. And that becomes specific to the type of vehicle you have and what you're trying to charge in terms of what power it can accept. From the grid standpoint and the distribution system. It's certainly a topic that matters. I've say the level two chargers are certainly a key topic for utilities, because your distribution transformers in your subdivisions. Those have a limit to them. So as there's higher and higher penetration of electric vehicles, those distribution transformers is going to start to see more and more load. And I know utilities, especially I can say for certain Hydro Ottawa. They're closely looking at that trend, looking at what the uptake in electric vehicles will be looking at the subdivisions that are starting to pick up with more and more electric vehicles and trying to make sure that they're planning ahead for what that that transformation capacity needs to be to support that. There's also some education there that the utility can use to support the public in terms of when they charge their vehicles, the optimum time to charge the vehicle to have a less of an impact on the grid. So all those different factors come into place. With a level three charger, you're certainly in a situation of more power, you might be in a situation where you're having a dedicated service or having to increase your service. Level three charges, you'd see it places more like a mall, or commercial spaces, places where people might travel to, you know, along the highways, you might have a rest stop with a level three charger, those have obviously the higher power requirement because people are looking to charge their vehicles faster, they want the gas station experience, they want to show up, fill up the car, grab their coffee, and a doughnut, whatever it is, they're going to, you know, have their seven minute stretch and hop back in the car and off they go to wherever it is they're going, they don't want, you know, to have stopping charging being a big destination of a trip, right. And so there's that element to it. And as the population of electric vehicles grows and grows, I think you'll see that become more and more of a relevant topic - in terms of the fast charger. So utilities are certainly looking at the impact of those higher capacity chargers. And where that can be put onto the grid. Because as you know, Dan, the distribution system has its limits to the infrastructure that was built so many years ago didn't necessarily have that spare capacity on the system for such a quick increase in load to it. So utilities are taking a good hard look at where they need to make their investments and create this as a key input to their planning cycles for mid short and long term planning for capacity and supply. Dan Seguin  16:35 Okay, so the business case for a charging station at home is fairly straightforward. But making a business case for fast chargers is a bit more challenging as it involves higher upfront capital and higher operating costs. Can you walk me through an assessment? A business case, if you want, for a large organization that wishes to install fast chargers? For argument's sake, like you were just talking about the large shopping center, looking for three fast chargers? What's the ROI? What's the benefit? How do they look at that? Jim Pegg  17:16 Sure. And it's a great topic. And it's a question that many people ask because it's a more difficult one. As you can imagine that level three charger that fast charger has a significantly higher upfront capital costs than like a level two charger but it is the type of charger that people are looking more and more for at those places, as you say like shopping malls and shopping centers. In terms of the business case, you have to sort of take a multi-faceted approach and almost layer on the benefits. Because we're early into the I'd say the change to electric vehicles, you'll see that business case gets stronger and stronger each year. The more vehicles are out there, the more this business case will strengthen I'll tell you why. In my opinion, there are a few benefits one is with an electric vehicle charger at your mall as an example. People can have those electric vehicle chargers essentially called Smart chargers, they're part of a network they're part of a system people can go into their app and say you know does this mall I can literally zoom in on a map and see Is there an electric vehicle charger at this mall. And if there is that becomes the mall that they decide to go to, if there's multiple malls and only a couple of them have the chargers and they're driving an electric vehicle, they're going to go the safe bet and pick the one that has that charger in case they want to get some extra charge while they're in doing their shopping. So it becomes a bit of a marketing piece on that side of things. There's also the you know the different organizations that have the natural desire to have a branding around being green and supportive of the shift to electric vehicles. So that element is there but obviously that one's harder to tie to the bottom line dollars. This is why I say the front capital cost is the trickiest part. With chargers level two chargers and the fast chargers you can actually charge money for people charging and there are different rates for that. Now, obviously people get into electric vehicles for a few different reasons. One is obviously better for the environment, which is just the main. And the other side of it is their own personal pocketbook, right not spending the dollars on filling up the gas station they can get much further on their dollar. And so they don't want to go to a place and have really high cost for that that charge that fill up. So you can get some return from charging for fast charging and for level two charging. But it won't necessarily show you the payback in any kind of a short timeframe that you're looking for. So the good news is that's where we've seen the government jump in. So we've seen historically the federal government, the provincial government put out different programs to support the installation, that upfront capital cost of these different infrastructure pieces and chargers, and that makes a big difference. One of the things Envari is great at and this is all due to our relationships, I'd say with these different organizations is that we have a good handle on different funding mechanisms that are out there in different ways to enable that business case to make more sense, from strictly a financial standpoint. But I'd say  that business case is going to evolve with time. You know, when everyone at that shopping center shows up with an electric vehicle, and there's a huge demand for charge, your supply and demand curve is going to kick in, you'll have people charging constantly and the payback period will be much shorter on that upfront capital cost. But for the early adopter, it's important to try and take think take advantage of those funding mechanisms that are out there. Dan Seguin  20:54 We know that at least 30% of Canadians live in multi-unit residential buildings today, and that the number is not likely to decline. Increasingly, residential real estate is moving toward multi-tenant construction. In Canada, two out of three homes built today are multifamily. In Ontario alone, nearly 700,000 households live in condos. Can you talk to me about solutions for Canadians discouraged from buying EVs? Because they have no easy means of charging them? Either in condominiums apartment buildings, or in their home at that like a driveway or garage? What can they do? And what solutions is Envari offering? Jim Pegg  21:44 Sure, that's another great question. So I would say there are a few things to note, I think there's lots of different policy changes and things like that taking place at a provincial level. And in some cases, federal levels to support some of these some of these areas of concern. So for example, in the multi-unit residential condo type building, there's legislation that now helps support a condo owner that wants to install electric vehicle in their building, and those condos and a condo boards are then sort of put to task to go out and find a solution that meets the needs of that tenant. And once one steps forward, you know, you might get more and more stuff for but at that point, you kind of need to put together a plan Envari helps, works hard to help support that in the sense that one of the things we offer something called an EVRA, we call it an electric vehicle readiness assessment. And we essentially use that tool to help an organization or building or property plan out their EV infrastructure. So multi-unit residential is a great example of this, where if you do it on an ad hoc approach, where you know, each time someone comes along, you've put in the effort to build out the infrastructure for them to put in that electric vehicle charging station versus a planned approach where you've come up with a holistic plan for all of your spots, not necessarily to build it all at once. But to sort of have that roadmap of what it will eventually look like. There's many different ways you can take advantage to things like existing capacity in your building. And, and really optimize that so that as people come along, it kind of turns into a bit of an easy button so that people can get a charger installed and move forward and the condo board and a condo group have met their obligations. And a customer's a nice sort of easy setup as they should expect, right? So we're seeing more and more organizations reach out to us to support them on that. And certainly one of our areas of expertise is looking at all the available options and optimizing the different scenarios. So there are a few good things there. I think no matter what type of building the EV owners live in Envari is here to help right so we evaluate the situation a case by case basis, try our best to provide a feasible charging solution for EV owners living in multi residential buildings. Again, you know, we talked about the different solutions there. But that becomes a big part of the conversation. The approach is similar with you know, with large shopping centers, we go in and do a bit of an assessment to say what are your options here without having to take on huge extra costs. Because if you go down one path versus another, there can be significant differences in the cost implications, all related to the available capacity and your different options, even the charger types that you select. One of the things Envari prides itself on is somewhat is being non committed, I'd say to two different manufacturers in the sense that we're technology agnostic, we provide different solutions to the customer. We give them different options and let the customer choose what they feel best fits them. Obviously backed up by our different recommendations and experience that we've seen. So we're always trying to find the right fit for that particular organization. It's certainly not a certainly not a one size fits all type of a scenario. You have, you have another part of that, which is, you know, people that have no driveways, or no space to park at home. That's where the municipalities and cities and towns and so on are really a big part of that conversation. I'm very happy to say here in Ottawa, that is certainly on their minds, I think the phrase that's used for that type of situation as someone whose garage orphaned in the sense that they don't have somewhere they can plug in overnight, and charge their car, and they need to rely on a public charging station. So while municipalities are looking for that location to put their public charging station, it's not just all about putting a public charging station in a busy commercial area, they're also taking into account different areas of town that might be more dense that don't have as many driveways. But there is a population of people there that need access to that type of service. So they're taking all those things into consideration when selecting sites, which takes us back to our earlier conversation about what municipalities are doing and standards. So the City of Ottawa is a good example are very forward thinking in that sense and doing a great job at really looking at those different factors to try and make sure they're meeting the needs of all their all their constituents in the city here. All the residents. Dan Seguin  26:38 Okay, Jim, let's move on. Actually, let's expand on municipalities. Studies show that transportation accounts for 25% of global greenhouse gas emissions. So there's a huge cost and environmental benefit for municipalities to move to electric. In Ottawa, it's actually quite a bit higher, where their transportation sector accounts for 44% of the city's GHG emissions. In your opinion, what steps should municipalities take to meet their various infrastructure requirements to electrify their fleets and provide public charging requirements? How is Envari helping municipalities meet their goals? I think you touched on that a bit, but maybe expand a bit. Jim Pegg  27:28 Yeah, no, sounds good. I think so obviously, greenhouse gas emissions can be greatly reduced by electrifying you know, bus fleets, providing public charging stations, increasing the number of electric vehicles on the road. Regarding bus fleet electrification, as chargers, for battery electric buses take a significantly higher amount of power. There are very large batteries on those buses. And you also don't want to have those buses sitting there for a long time taking a long time to charge or you want them as out on the road servicing the public. So they do take that that higher power compared with, you know, car charging or things like that. So the existing electrical capacity at transit agency, bus depots is likely to be likely not to have been designed for a shift to full electrification of their of their fleets, if you look at bus fleets as an example. So to build the electrical infrastructure, I would say municipalities and I think a lot of this is happening, municipalities are working closely with their local distribution companies, as well as organizations like Envari, to try and put together what that that roadmap looks like of going from a of a base load of x getting up to, you know, a base load that which is significantly higher. So that that can involve, you know, distribution, build outs, capacity changes, service changes. And those different stakeholders that need to look at the different options that are out there as well in terms of, you know, putting together things like large energy storage, in line with their different optimizations, that power and that, that supply of power. So there's, there's, again, there's no one size fits all, but I think I think the conversation needs to start early. There needs to be a lot of information sharing. I know municipalities also do a pretty good job of sharing their experiences with each other and I can say Envari is also very active in the in the fleet communication, the fleet world I would say in terms of having active communication with different organizations that are also working hard to convert their fleets and I think we're all learning from each other as that process goes on, and I think that's the best way to do it. I mean, you've got a situation where we're, we're trying to make some big changes that are really going to support the environment. And those big changes can have huge, long lasting impacts on our communities. But it's going to take, it's going to take many minds to put those pieces together, you know, Envari is lucky in the sense that we're really well positioned being the affiliate of the utility, we've got a lot of great utility knowledge. And at the same time, we've got a lot of great behind the meter. Customer side knowledge. And so we're somewhat well positioned to have the conversations in both directions, I would say, and, and help bring those parties together in some cases to expand on that. We're very much active supporters, believers in the shift to electric mobility, the electrification of transportation, you know, again, as I said earlier, we offer services such as EVRAs, EV charger rentals and sales and also operate and maintain type services related to electric vehicle charging. And there's other pieces that come into this whole thing, right, as soon as you're talking electric vehicles and supply capacity, things like that, you need to you need to take a step back and take a look at your total energy usage, maybe at a different at a certain facility or at a site, again, with one of the great benefits we have at Envari is having that that long lasting, that long history of, of energy management's and looking at different energy sources and supplies and ways to maximize energy and buildings. So we have our buildings division, which really looks at optimizing and making a building more energy efficient. And our lighting group, which really looks at the lighting side of energy efficiency. When you pull all those pieces together, you can really optimize how much capacity you really have available, you can really optimize what you're planning for it is, but it certainly takes looking at lots of different angles. Because the amount of investment you're going to put in, you want to make sure you're leveraging that investment as much as you can. And getting multiple uses of that investment. Dan Seguin  31:57 On investments. I think in my view, the price of DC charging solutions has dropped while AC charging stations to the level of one and twos, at least that 50 kilowatts have been more popular. They've started to lose ground to the DC fast charging stations. What impact will this trend have on utility transformers? I think you touched on that earlier. Also, will this movement require skilled in-house Energy specialist and more engineers? Jim Pegg  32:28 Yeah. So again, another great question. I'd say the quick answer is, it will have an impact as one would expect, you know, larger chargers means larger power draw, in turn is going to be more demand on the utility. And we talked a little bit of demand on the wire side of the utility. But upstream of those wires, you get into the utilities, power transformers and their substations. And those substations have capacity limits as well. So typically, for a level three charger, you know, a detailed site specific design is required. Working hand in hand with engineers and the local utility to come up with what that solution looks like that typically customized solution. From the utilities perspective, this will also start to have an impact on utilities, as we said, their substation, transformers, everything, even the equipment on that line in terms of the different ratings of the equipment and so on, the more power that's at play, and the more power in the system, the more requirements there are to make that system operate in a reliable and safe manner. Charging through the day. But also after hours can mean the normal cooling curve of a power transformer changes. So the more electric vehicle fleet charging, for example, in high voltage DC, excuse me fast charging. If some of that's happening at night, you're going to really be putting load on those Transformers that historically wouldn't have seen much load through the night people are sleeping. Those transformers are very much designed to have a cooling cycle to them, that cooling cycles is going to change. So I know there's a lot of people looking at those impacts to see if they're if they are going to be a negative impact or not. And if there needs to be changes to those assets moving forward in terms of understanding the impacts of sort of a more high base load 24 hours a day type situation. I would say that's those are some of the big the big pieces that are being looked at. Dan Seguin  34:30 Okay. I'd like to go back to the investment here. We're talking about significant investments for companies and municipalities. What kind of industry experience does Envari have to assist those organizations to navigate their way through the design and scaling of an EV charging program, whether it's residential, commercial fleet, and multi residential units? I think you alluded to that earlier, but maybe you can do a deeper dive. Jim Pegg  34:59 Yeah, sure. So I think, you know, as we did talk a little bit earlier, Envari is uniquely positioned, we do have a deep understanding of the distribution system, you know, members of our staff came right from the utility with many years of experience their various roles, and as well as the customer side, because I mean that that's our business is enabling our customer success. So with that, we're able to walk projects through rate from start to finish looking at all the short and long term impacts, as they relate to both the customer as well as the utility. And understanding the utility side of it really helps us understand where there will be pushback, or being better prepared to support the utilities questions, because the utility at the end of the day has a big responsibility as well, they're responsible to all the customers on the system to make sure the system is reliable. And if you know, for certain load comes onto the system, that's going to have a negative impact on the rest of the system utility has a responsibility to make sure that that that issue is addressed because you can't have one customer come on and cause poor reliability or issues for other parts of the system. And you know, outside of normal electric or normal, normal work that goes on there's new development, there's construction intensification in cities and things like that, those also take electrical supply. So there's going to be more and more competing priorities for electrical supply. And it Envari is in a really good position to have those conversations and understand where the optimal locations may be for things like large fleets, charging and, and that type of thing. So I would say that that supports quite a bit, as well as some other expertise that I talked about earlier, you know, looking at something like an electrical vault. Envari has a great amount of experience and understanding of buildings electrical vault, which is a key part of the puzzle for electric vehicle charging, that’s sort of the area that tells you how much available capacity you have to actually install electric vehicle chargers. And optimizing that because an electrical vault can be an expensive asset. So you want to try and optimize your building's energy usage to reduce the load on that vault so that you can then leverage that spare capacity to install electric vehicle chargers before having to upgrade. But then if you do need to upgrade, the good news is there's ways to optimize the expense of those upgrades, and to work with your utility. And there's different ways you can avoid future costs too. And some of the scenarios that we're able to, to map out for customers. So, again, I think I said before this, there's no one size fits all. And our approach of having a technology agnostic approach really helps us to create a solution that fits well for each particular customer. And to take our experience from one project to the next to support peoples' success. Dan Seguin  38:01 Let's look at this future side of the business here, I want you to take out that crystal ball. In a smart city of tomorrow, the Internet of Things will connect residents, cars, buses, streetlights, and the public transit system. What do you see is your role in this connected city? And what is exciting you the most about this new future? Jim Pegg  38:27 Well, let's say you know, Envari is and I realize I'm probably repeating myself on this, but we do feel very passionate about this. Envari exists to make our customers successful. So we are constantly looking for new and innovative solutions that can help our customers in new ways, right? I mean, one of my colleagues will always say, he's never gone into a building and not found an opportunity to save energy. And this might be a building that he's been in before and done things and done lots of energy retrofits, but because technology keeps changing, you know, you might go in and do work in the building and do changes to the HVAC system put in lighting control systems. All things Envari has great experience with and save a pile of money for that customer in terms of their energy costs. And maybe five years down the road, 10 years down the road, some new technology will come out related to maybe the lighting or the windows or something else related to the HVAC system where the controls have gotten even more efficient are the units have gotten even more efficient. So when that asset is ready for replacement again, you can really dive in and do more of that deep retrofit. And that all comes out of innovation. I would say our ability to take projects from concept through to completion and offer operate and maintain services, working to ensure customers have options that fit their needs. Connected cities fits in very well with all these sets of expertise. Give you a good example: We have a strong Very strong lighting group who, who I think I think has, you know, recently completed the City of Ottawa lighting conversion Project 55,000 lights in the city of Ottawa. And as you can imagine, those lights are all over the place in the city, they're everywhere, and they have power to them, they have smart nodes on them, those could become a big part of a connected city in the future, it can become a key piece to that puzzle. And our team has done a great job working with the city and, and putting in place a system that will allow some of that enhanced ability in the future. And so I think that piece that really ties our expertise together well, in terms of our understanding of control systems, and even our energy dashboard offering that we have where people can enter, monitor their energy consumption, and energy usage. All those things tie into sort of the world we live in today, where people want information right away. And information right away allows for, you know, adjustment of plans and constantly looking for new and efficient ways to do things. And that's what we're trying to support. We're trying to support our customer success in an ever changing technological world. I think what excites me the most, I'd have to say, what excites me the most is, I think the opportunity that lies in front of all of us right now. I think we're all well aware of the situation  with regards to the environment. And I think something COVID has shown us is with all the vehicles off the road, as an example, we've got now hard data that shows us the impact that can have on the environment. And you know, before it was a theoretical thing, because it wasn't really practical to the go to all of North America, for example, say, hey, can everyone stay home today? You know, anybody the laughed off the curve kind of thing. But now, that's almost happened. And we can look at that and say, Wow, look what that did in the atmosphere. And with all those emissions just shutting off. And that is what it will be like if we you know, convert to that electric vehicle situation, with more and more electric vehicles on the road. So, again, I think what excites me is is that opportunity we have, as a society to have a really significant impact positive impact on our environment, a real turning point to set this planet up nicely for our kids and grandkids. Dan Seguin  42:35 You talked about the cookie cutter. So I'd like to come back to that. Jim, with so many variables like charging hubs, workplace charging for fleets, multi residential, and electric public transit, I'm assuming there isn't a single cookie cutter solution for all? Based on your experience, can you tell us about the different types and the processes to implement these? Jim Pegg  43:07 Sure,  as you say, there are many different scenarios. And Envari's approach typically for depends on the type of charge or the type of the scenario we're looking at. But our approach is often to start with what I referred to earlier was our EVRA in electric vehicle readiness assessment. Or essentially, we'll go in, we'll look at a building's capacity, and we'll look at the different options, we'll find out from a customer what it is that they are trying to accomplish, what is their specific need. From there, we'll talk about the different experiences we've had in the different things we've seen that have taken place and other places, again, as I alluded to earlier, so that we can learn from all those experiences and pull that knowledge together. But again, ultimately, it's about finding out from the customer, what exactly it is they're trying to achieve. And then from there, we'll put in front of them a number of different solutions, things that take advantage of different types of charging technology, things that look at different types of metering technology. There's, there's so many different solutions out there right now that you can put together almost like a little puzzle, to really find that perfect fit for an organization in terms of the situation they're trying to resolve. Once we understand those goals, again, longer term possibilities, and we've laid out the options. We're also  in a great situation that we can actually build out that infrastructure. So we can actually  do the build it the design the engineering, build out that infrastructure for the customer and basically right through commissioning. And we also offer an operating maintain type of  solution. So you know, and again, I'll see I'll see this and I know we've said it a couple times here today, but there is no single cookie cutter solution, there just isn't. Even the standards around electric vehicles are ever changing. And the types of chargers I'm sure will change in the future, you know, a great example is some stuff we're seeing out of Toronto where they're taking situations where you wouldn't normally be able to put a fast charger because of maybe capacity constraints. And they're marrying up the charger with battery storage, so that they can you know, from the grids perspective, , you see a normal, moderate size load. But then on the charger side, on the car side, you can get actually a DC fast charge out of it, because you've got it paired with a battery that can discharge when you need it, and then trickle charge when that's not being used. So I mean, innovation, like that's going to go a long way. And, as I said, we're trying to stay on top of all those different innovations that come out to provide those best solutions for our customers. Dan Seguin  46:02 Cool. Thank you, Jim. With the significant increase of demand on the grid, how important is the management of power to balance the load? What are some of the things you identify with local utilities? And what should they do? And what should they be looking for, to support electrifying transportation today? Jim Pegg  46:29 Yeah, so I mean, as we've discussed, understanding the charger penetration on the distribution system, predicting when those chargers will be installed, and at what rate. And lastly, understanding the operation of those chargers will be a key piece of the information to support strong system planning. The good news is utilities do a great job of constantly looking at the distribution system, working to understand future demands on the system. This takes us back to the importance of having those conversations with utilities early. And it's important about having the right partner can support you who knows what questions to ask of those utilities. Dan Seguin  47:12 Jim, can you give me in your opinion about today's big question, are electric utilities and oil companies to industries in unique positions to help build a true EV movement in Canada? The former controls electricity distribution networks in the provinces and municipalities, while the ladder already operates strategically located fuel stations for internal combustion vehicles. What are your thoughts on that? Jim Pegg  47:45 Well, I would say if you've probably heard me echo this comment throughout in terms of the utility. I absolutely think the answer to the utility piece of that is clear. I think utilities are a key piece of the puzzle. Organizations like Envari that understand utility world, as well as the customer side of the meter. I think I think there are some key pieces there. I think the utilities obviously have a great understanding of the power flow and the impacts of the system. They're the ones that are going to do your technical deep dive to see if you've got, you know, very big bank of large fast chargers in one area, is that going to have any impact on systems power quality and, and things like that in terms of the type of load, you know, things that things that not everyone may think of. So those are, those are some key factors. But I think the utility is absolutely a part of that. Because, you know, at the end of the day, people, myself included, look to the utility for reliable power supply. And as we're converting things like fleets, and even especially transportation fleets that reliable power supply becomes somewhat critical to the economy in the sense that moving people around, you know, transportation move people around, if the lights go out, you want to make sure you've got maybe a good redundant backup supply. Or you have a system that's going to allow for switching the distribution system and maybe even automated switching at some point. So utilities are doing lots of different things. You know, as they as they work to change that ever changing landscape, again, COVID is a great example of that, right with a lot of people working from home. The utilities are, are working hard to make sure that they don't disrupt people that are working from home. Regarding the large oil companies. And I think, I believe, I believe we'll see more and more of those organizations getting involved with EV charging infrastructure. You know, as you notice, gas stations are everywhere and well suited for fast charging. We see more innovation on how to best use those properties. I think the electrification of vehicles is going to drive many changes in that respect. Dan Seguin  50:04 Okay, Jim, let's close off with rapid fire questions. I hope you're ready. Jim Pegg  50:09 Okay. Dan Seguin  50:10 What is your favorite word? Jim Pegg  50:13 Innovation Dan Seguin  50:14 What is the one thing you can't live without? Jim Pegg  50:17 My family Dan Seguin  50:18 What habits or hobbies have you picked up during shelter in place? Jim Pegg  50:23 That's a good one. I would say I do a lot more cooking Dan Seguin  50:26 Okay. If you could have one superpower, what would it be? Jim Pegg  50:32 Well, you're asking me this during the fall. So I'm going to go with the ability to fly and fly around and see all the nice colors. It's probably my favorite time of year. Dan Seguin  50:41 Good one, good one. If you could turn back time, and talk to your 18 year old self? What would you tell him? Jim Pegg  50:51 I think I would say your career path won't be a straight line. But that's okay. Dan Seguin  50:58 And lastly, what do you currently find most interesting in your sector? Jim Pegg  51:04 I'm going to tie this back to the innovation. I think the amount of innovation and the number of little things that I see that can have such a huge impact on the environment. And I really do believe there's a big opportunity in front of all of us right now to have a very large lasting impact. Dan Seguin  51:22 Cool. Well, Jim, we've reached the end of another episode of think energy podcast. Last question for you. How can our listeners learn more about you the company? And how can they connect? Jim Pegg  51:35 Well, I guess the best way is to check out our website at envari.com, and you can always reach out to myself or called my colleagues on LinkedIn as well. And we're always happy to have the conversations. Sometimes we might go on for too long, because obviously it's a many different topics we're passionate about. So, but always happy to chat and learn from each other. Dan Seguin  51:59 Okay, again, Jim, thank you so much for joining me today. I hope you had a lot of fun. Jim Pegg  52:04 Yeah, that was great. Dan, thanks very much. Always, always great to have your conversations with you. Dan Seguin  52:09 Thank you for joining us today. I truly hope you enjoyed this episode of ThinkEnergy podcast. For past episodes, make sure you visit our website hydroottawa.com/podcast. Lastly, if you found value in this podcast, be sure to subscribe. Anyway, this podcast is a wrap. Cheers, everyone.

The electricity landscape is transforming rapidly as consumer demands evolve, new technologies emerge, and climate change rises in priority. Canada’s electricity industry must remain at the forefront of these changes, but what will be needed to make this possible? What will Canada’s electricity future look like, and who is at the helm of its metamorphosis? To help us better understand this complex topic, we’ve invited a very special guest - the President and CEO of the Canadian Electricity Association, Francis Bradley.   Related Content & Links: Websites: • Canadian Electricity Association: www.electricity.ca • Hydro Ottawa - https://hydroottawa.com/ Social Media: • Twitter: Francis Bradley - @BradBradley • LinkedIn: Francis Bradley - https://www.linkedin.com/in/francis-bradley-3617802a/   Transcript: Dan Seguin  00:41 Hey, everyone, welcome back. This is the ThinkEnergy podcast. The electric power grid has been called the world's largest machine and the greatest engineering achievement of the 20th century. No matter where you live, the electricity grid is the machine that connects us to one another. In a modern world, the affordability and reliability of the country's electricity grid can be directly tied to its prosperity, stability, and the health of its citizens. Canada has been very fortunate. We have one of the most reliable electrical grids in the world. But Canadians are demanding more. They want to interact and connect with the grid like never before. They want their devices to use and produce electricity seamlessly. They want home generation, cleaner buildings, an EV transportation infrastructure, they want clean air and less pollution. Today we're going to talk about Canada's expansive electricity grid. From our humble beginnings in 1883, when Canada's parliament building in Ottawa became one of the first government buildings in the world to be outfitted with incandescent lighting, to speculating about what the world holds for Canada's electricity system. It's all on today's program. The electricity landscape is transforming thanks to more complex customer demands, and rapidly evolving technologies. In short, Canada's electricity industry must be at the forefront of this change or risk being left behind. But is it that simple? The electric grid is more than just infrastructure. It takes a village to run including asset owners, manufacturers, service providers, and government officials at the federal, provincial, and local levels. That must all work together. So here's today's big question. What does Canada's electricity future look like? And who is at the helm of its metamorphosis? To help us better understand a topic as big as Canada itself, we invited a very special guest, the President and CEO of the Canadian Electricity Association, Francis Bradley. Francis, perhaps you can start by telling us a bit about yourself, what drew you to your current role and what the Canadian electricity Association does? Francis Bradley  03:20 Well, it's a long and winding road. You know, I was always interested in energy when I was a kid. But I studied political science. And I worked in the oil and gas sector and I worked in the banking sector. Before just by happenstance, I landed at CEA and that was 34 years ago. I've worked in every role at CEA from that time, from communications to member services to cybersecurity emergency preparedness, US affairs, I've lobbied up on Parliament Hill. And I was even acting treasurer and Secretary for the Association for a time. So what CEA is and what CEA does is we're the association that is the voice of Canada's electricity industry. Our members are the 40 largest electricity companies in Canada. So it's the companies that generate, transmit, distribute, and provide customer service to electricity customers, literally from coast to coast to coast. Our numbers are in every province and in all three territories. Dan Seguin  04:31 How would you describe the future of Canada's electricity sector and its importance to Canada's economic future and prosperity? Francis Bradley  04:39 Well, we are living in a time when we have a government in Ottawa that is committed to a netzero GHG emissions by 2050. There's generally a consensus throughout society that that the future will be a future that will be a decarbonized future. And so that's a future that will be electric, frankly, you know, the only way we're going to be able to get to that low carbon future will be by increasing the use of electricity, frankly, in as many places as we can, the obvious ones are transportation. But you know, to be able to get really, really significant carbon reductions over the long term, we're going to have to look at electrifying not just transportation, but industrial process and heating, ventilation, air conditioning. And then when it you know, when it comes to transportation, it's going to have to be more than just, you know, electric cars, it's going to have to be really transportation across the board. But, you know, electricity has been the great enabler of modern society, and it's only going to continue in the future to be that critical, and that important piece that enabler of the future, because that future is going to be even more electric. You know, we're an industry that employs almost 100,000, Canadians, everything from lineworkers, to helicopter pilots to control room specialists. So you know, it's an industry that represents some very diverse skill sets. But that's going to be changing even more so in the future. Right. Even today, Dan, you know, there is this massive expansion because of the increase in the use of digital technologies in our space. And that's only going to increase as we head towards 2050. That there will always be line workers to make sure that the the electricity gets to the customers, but increasingly, the kinds of specialties that companies require, to be able to provide the kind of services that customers are going to need in the future means that that profile is going to change. And you know, what, we're going to start looking more and more like high tech companies than then strictly sort of building an engineering companies, you know, not to pander to the audience. But your, your company, I think, was the first company to introduce, what was it? A smart speaker skill. You know, speaking of AI, right? We're, I think you guys were the first out of the gate with your own smart speaker skill that you developed for Alexa and for Google Assistant. But you know, that that's, that really is just the very beginning of what that future is going to look like today. We use a little bit of what what is, you know, sort of the beginnings of AI in our homes to control some of our electricity use. But you know, cache your mind 30 years into the future? 2050? What is that going to look like? How much AI is going to be involved in the development of and implementation of a smarter energy system and a smarter electricity system? Dan Seguin  08:07 Great segue to the question, what kinds of innovation are leading the current transformation of the electricity industry here in Canada? And can you give us some examples of other countries that are innovating their energy sectors in profound ways? Francis Bradley  08:25 You know, the innovation that we see in the electricity sector is probably the thing that I find most exciting about the industry, the electricity industry, right now, it is endlessly fascinating, because it is so fast moving. When I joined the sector, 34 years ago, I never would have imagined that we would be one of the sectors that was at the leading edge of the development of new innovative solutions, not just to the, you know, the production and transportation of electricity, but to energy use, writ large, we see innovation, transforming the industry. And we see it coming from, as I say, from from within the industry, as well. So, you know, as one of my colleagues likes to point out that well, a lot of innovation takes place in Silicon Valley. And a lot of innovation takes place, you know, in the IT world, there's also a heck of a lot of innovation that we see taking place here, in in Canada - and within the electricity sector itself. We see people that are on the absolute leading edge of so many innovations with respect to the generation the use of electricity, the implementation, your company, for example, with your MiGen transactive grid is something that, you know, people all across North America and probably around the world are watching very carefully to see to see how that is is is rolling out and how it's being implemented. But you know, we have Worldwide leaders on the use of electricity, electricity transformation, electricity transportation and electrification of transportation, we have some absolute world leaders here in Canada, and, you know, go all the way up to the top of the value chain with respect to generation, and we see incredible innovation taking place, both in the sort of the traditional side of electricity generation, whether it's trying to figure out how hydro dams can be more efficient. And how we can extract more megawatts that have the same amount of water, to looking at how we capture carbon, which is an issue of, you know, in, in some jurisdictions, in this country, where, you know, the options for generating electricity may not be quite as, as numerous as here in central Canada. But you know, we have the the first ever utility scale carbon capture and storage facility, the world's first was built here in Canada, in Saskatchewan, of all places, you know, we see a great deal of innovation in that space as well. But you know, we're also a sector that's looking out and looking out around the world, and seeing where other new approaches are being developed and what can be adapted and used for our jurisdictions. Electricity transportation, for example, a great deal of innovation taking place in in Scandinavia. And so there is a lot of interest, both in terms of the approaches from a technical standpoint, but there in particular, from also from a policy standpoint,  what are the policy innovations that are being put in place, that are that are that are moving them far more quickly into an electric transportation future. And then Jeez, you know, you can even look at the emerging hydrogen economy and new technologies that are that are being developed and implemented, South Korea would be an example where we're, we're seeing, you know, 200 megawatt plant, a hydrogen fuel cell plant, that is that is being built that again, will be a world beater. So, you know, we're seeing innovation right here in Ottawa, and we're seeing innovation all around the world. And as a sector, we're trying to figure out, Okay, how do we take the best of all of those, whether it's technical innovation, or or regulatory innovation? And how do we look at implementing it to the benefit of customers here in Canada, Dan Seguin  12:42 Over the last number of months, many Canadians have transformed their homes into classrooms, workspaces, meeting spaces and care centers. How has our industry come together to tackle this pandemic challenge? As an industry, what's been our role? Francis Bradley  13:01 There are a number of companies here in Canada and in the United States, that had pandemics as one of their planning criterias, when they were doing emergency planning and emergency preparedness. So nobody could have predicted exactly how the pandemic itself would have rolled out. But companies all across North American, you know, and elsewhere, had been planning for this kind of a contingency, this kind of a challenge. And so, that's one of the interesting things, you know, if we, if we look back over, you know, the past several months, one of the really interesting things is that we did not see a failure of the electricity system as a result of COVID-19. In fact, you know, we've worked very hard with other sectors as well, we didn't see failures in critical infrastructure as a result of COVID-19. Now, it still created some really significant challenges to the customers, to our employees, to the to the public writ large. But this is a sector that had been preparing for a challenge. I mean, you know, we prepare for for storms, we prepare for potential cyber attacks, and we prepare for pandemics. And so we were able to very quickly pivot and seek to to to meet the challenges. And you know, we did it on a cooperative and a collaborative basis. We saw pretty significant cooperation within the electricity sector here in Canada, where companies were learning from each other. The CEOs of companies all across this country were getting together on conference calls every single week for the first three months of COVID-19. Why were they doing that? Well, they were talking about what ideas people had and what things that they've been using. And really what were the most effective practices to make sure that the customer was being taken care of, and the public was being taken care of, and the the employees were being taken care of. And so we saw this massive exchange of best practices among the CEOs here within Canada. We saw it between Canada and the United States, because, you know, we're part of a shared North American electricity grid. And we saw a level of cooperation and collaboration between the electricity sector, and governments that, frankly, was surprising. We work well, in most circumstances, but you know, people really stepped up to make sure that they would, they were able to do everything that could be done to make sure that we were going to be able to continue to operate everything from, you know, assisting industry to access personal protective equipment, to helping us address issues, even as it may sound mundane, but it's a challenge sometimes, to getting people across the Canada-US border, for the purposes of maintenance. So, you know, it was a whole of industry, and really a whole of the economy approach to this. And it started right at the very top, from the the presidents of the companies constantly, you know, discussing with each other about what is the most effective practice to everybody within the companies themselves, pulling together to see how we can work as effectively as possible. And, you know, as I said earlier, the bottom line is, we kept the lights on for the customers, and we were in and we were also very sensitive to some of the challenges that they were facing. But you know, the bottom line is reliability was not impacted, and the customer was not left in the dark. Dan Seguin  16:52 Will the electricity sector be assuming a bigger role in energy consumption through electrification, with infrastructure having to withstand increasing stresses, such as extreme weather events, and the incorporation of new loads? Is the sector creating resiliency strategies? Francis Bradley  17:13 Resiliency is at the heart of what this sector is all about. And that's been the case, really, since the sort of the inception of the electricity sector. When we first began using electricity as a, as a as an energy form and as a commodity. It was important, but you know, initially with street lighting, it wasn't critical, and it wasn't a lifeline. It's a lifeline today, right. And so the criticality of electricity to individuals in their homes, to businesses, to services across the country. It is the critical infrastructure sector that all others depend upon. You know, if you look at the importance of all of the different infrastructures, all critical infrastructure is a is vitally important, certainly, but almost all of them cannot run if they don't have basic electricity. So how are we going to make sure that the history that we've had of resilience is maintained as we move into a future that is going to, as you say, we will have increasing stresses, we're going to have more extreme weather events. And so how do we go about that? Well, what it's going to take is it's going to take redoubling of our efforts, it means we are already building things more to higher standards, and we were previously but it means we're going to have to put significantly more investments into the system. The Conference Board of Canada estimated that, that our electricity needs in a 20 year period from 2010 to 2030, would be about $350 billion. But, you know, that was a like for like it didn't take into consideration both electrification and climate mitigation, for example. There's a new study that's been done that tries to get a handle on what kind of investments are going to be required so that we can meet those challenges. And the latest estimate is it's going to take an investment of about $1.7 trillion by 2050, to ensure that our electricity infrastructure can meet the challenges of both the electrification and climate mitigation. You know, as a result, what we see is already today, six of the top 10 infrastructure projects right now are in the electricity sector. And you know, where were that will continue well into the future that illiteracy will be key to both the the investments that are taking place in our core infrastructure. But they will be building an ever more secure and ever more reliable system into the future. But it's not easy. You know, there are challenges, there's always challenges when you're building infrastructure. There is public opposition to new infrastructure projects, and, and at times this lack of government policy certainty and predictability in terms of moving some of those projects forward. And so, you know, we're working with governments, and we're working with organizations like the Canada infrastructure bank, so that we can ensure that companies have access to the capital that's needed to replace the aging infrastructure and infrastructure that needs to be upgraded to meet those those challenges of the future. Dan Seguin  20:52 What are some of the challenges and opportunities that sectors are seeing as it relates to the impact of climate change, adopting renewable, clean energy and moving away from fossil fuels? Francis Bradley  21:04 Well, you know, to begin with where we're starting from is, we're starting from a place that is the envy, frankly, have a lot of other jurisdictions. compared to most other countries, our sector is already clean. So we're starting from a relatively clean sector to begin with. It's one of the cleanest electricity sectors in the world, we have the advantage of remarkably low carbon electricity grid, and it's been getting cleaner. So from 2000 to 2017, there's been a reduction in our sectors carbon dioxide, emissions of 42%. So more than 80% of the electricity in in Canada now comes from non emitting sources. And so we continue to focus on decarbonisation. The targets that I'd mentioned earlier, are going to mean that decarbonisation and further electrification are going to absolutely be required if we're going to meet our climate challenges of the future. So, you know, among those challenges that the that are out there, achieving a 90%, or greater net zero emissions in electricity in Canada? What's that going to require? Well, we have to recognize that there's regional constraints, there's technology limitations, there's system level planning that needs to be done so that we can ensure safety, we can ensure reliability, and most of all, that we can ensure affordability for Canadians. And so that's that's a big challenge. You know, Canada should continue to enable investments in clean energy. But the federal government needs to make a concerted effort to leverage the already clean energy portfolio of our sector to decarbonize other sectors of the economy. And, you know, I mentioned earlier I mentioned transportation. That's a big one. And I think that is the next one. You know, and a lot of people think that electrification is about the growth of electric vehicles, but it's going to be a lot more than that: mass transit, a heavy duty trucking, I mean, those are going to be significant into the future. But also, you know, we looked at a study by the electric power Research Institute, they noted that electrification in the US could increase their demand anywhere from 24 to 52%. We've seen studies in Canada that suggests that demand for electricity may double or even triple if we move forward and and begin to reach our 2050 targets. Dan Seguin  23:37 This next one is a file you're quite familiar with: What are your thoughts on the industry's level of preparedness and response to cyber security threats? Does the CEA play a role in the security of this sector? Francis Bradley  23:55 You know, I've been involved in cybersecurity issues for more than 22 years. In fact, it's been one of the most interesting files that I've worked on at CEA, I got involved in this space during y2k, which I think some of your listeners probably weren't around for but the you know, as we were heading towards towards the year 2000, we were preparing for, you know, the potential for for cyber disruptions. But that gave us as a sector, a leg up, to begin to understand, as we kind of got into the new millennium, what the future cyber challenges were going to look like. And as a sector, you know, the electricity sector really has been on the front line of this and has been leading a lot of the work with respect to cyber resilience and cybersecurity. Now that's out of necessity, you know, as the you know, as I often say, electricity is the infrastructure that every other infrastructure relies on. And so this is the one that is, is the one that must not fail. cyber attacks are real. You know, we've used to be able to say, no cyberattack has ever resulted in the loss of electricity service to a customer. We can't say that. But five years ago, there was a cyber attack in the Ukraine, that some of my colleagues in the in the electricity sector cyberspace refer to as when we cross the Rubicon, this is the first time that a cyber attack actually resulted in the loss of electricity to customers. So you know, the sector has been working incredibly hard on ensuring that we're ready for cyber threats. We work on a collaborative basis across North America, but specifically within the Canadian sector, you know, we've been organizing our members, and we've been working with federal officials, Canadian federal officials, for two decades in this space. And frankly, the the level of collaboration in the models that we've been using, have been now replicated in other sectors as well, for for both the approach to specifically to addressing and preparing for cyber threats, and the collaboration that is absolutely required between the different players, and the government. And to top it off, every two years, we do a major tabletop exercise, it's called the Grid X series of exercises. So we just finished Grid X 4 last year. And it's a North American wide exercise a tabletop exercise on security, but the core of it is a cybersecurity exercise. And so it's something that every pretty much every electricity company, across North America, thousands of companies and 10s of thousands of individuals participate in every other year on a North American basis, in addition to what the companies do themselves, so it is very much front and center for our members. Dan Seguin  27:12 Okay, Francis, in the very near future, more and more customers will have the ability to sell and trade energy, how will this impact the traditional utility-customer relationship and the stability of the grid? Francis Bradley  27:28 That's a relationship that's changing. Absolutely. You know, for a hundred years, the Canadian electricity companies had a very simple mandate, provide reliable and safe power to all customers keep the lights on. And that's exactly what they did. But they did it in a in a very linear manner. Electricity went from generation through transmission through distribution to the end customer went from one end to the other end. Now, the model is changing. And I know you've talked about this on a number of previous podcasts. But you know, today, utilities are expected to in addition to just making sure the lights stay on, they're expected to provide a broad range of energy services, new technology, renewable sources of energy, consumer convenience, and personalization are now the drivers have great innovation. Proactive communication capabilities are endless. You know, system outage updates are communicated via texts, linking to outages on maps, pending weather challenges are communicated via Twitter, you know, that whole, not just how electricity is produced, but, but how the companies interact with the customer is changing, and it will continue to change. And so how do we prepare for the grid demands of the future? You know, we've moved from a one size fits all electricity offering, and we're going to be moving into a future state where electricity solutions will be highly customized, to meet the diverse household, business and community needs where end-use consumers are going to be empowered to adopt a growing range of innovative energy solutions. And so that not only what  is the sort of supply chain changing, and in some ways it's becoming, as it is with some of the projects of your company, Dan - transactive and two-way, but also the expectations are changing, along with this pretty significant change of of technology that is underpinning all of it. And you know, we we talk about AI: What, what role will AI have in that future transactive relationship between the electricity company and the customer? It's still, you know, an open question, and it's in the middle of pretty significant evolution as we speak, Dan Seguin  29:49 What will be the role of distributed energy in Canada's future? And what are some of the benefits Canadians will see as we move toward distributed and sustainable energy. Francis Bradley  30:01 So the role of distributed energy in Canada's future is a really interesting question. You know, I am sometimes asked by people, whether or not the future is going to be a distributed energy future, or the future is going to be a centralized, large generation future. And my answer is, it is going to have to be both. If you look at, you know, the the predictions of what the requirement for electricity is going to be in 2050. In a deep decarbonized future, we're going to need every kilowatt that we can get every low carbon, no carbon kilowatt that we can get. So distributed energy is going to be absolutely essential. And it's going to be a key piece of what that future is going to look like. So, you know, the most fundamental of transformations is this emergence of an ever more diverse, distributed and technology enabled electricity system that is developing, and it is happening in parallel, and it will, I believe, complement, the central generation grid that we've been used to in the future, one is not going to replace the other. But you know, what, we're seeing CEA members who are working to modernize the electricity system to enable integration of technologies that deliver customer benefits. Governments and the regulatory agencies also have a major role in fostering that innovation. And, you know, how does risk-taking in this space evolve? Well, that raises regulatory questions as well. So, you know, we're working with federal and provincial policymakers, we're working with regulators, we're looking to encourage greater receptivity to innovation-enabling investments. And, you know, based on current trends worldwide, the electricity industry expects significant growth, not just electric vehicles that I talked about, but battery storage, and distributed generation, new investments in emerging technologies, even things like just small modular reactors, which will be part and parcel of that distributed energy future are gonna make a significant difference to the delivery of energy services in the decades ahead. Dan Seguin  32:18 As a result of extensive consultations your association has conducted, what are some of the pressing issues from your members in the electricity sector? Are you seeing any patterns? Francis Bradley  32:29 The most pressing industry pressing issues for our members in the electricity sector? That question, of course, would be answered very differently if we spoke nine months ago. Because so much of the focus recently is on COVID-19. But, you know, one steps back one of the on ongoing themes that we hear from our members, is the need for a national strategy to guide electrification. It remains a key policy objective that we've got, we talk about electrification, but having a national vision and a national strategy is one of the things that we're hearing consistently across the sector, we need to quantify the scope and the timing of new generation requirements, we need to determine the most efficient electrification opportunities by region, we need to identify what are the required policy and investment tools. So you know, we need a strategic national strategy on electrification to move that forward. But we need regulatory alignment, you know, and there is there's a fair amount of work here. And it isn't just Canada, US, it's within Canada as well. You know, we we don't have regulatory consistency, across jurisdictions and amongst different governments. And then, you know, when speaking about the regulatory environment, it is challenging. Today already, you know, at the federal level alone, the electricity sector is affected by over 90 different regulations that are either enforced or pending. And so, you know, this is a very challenging regulatory environment within which our members operate and are attempting to roll out the infrastructure that's going to be required to meet those future needs. And then finally, you know, what, we need to encourage modernization as a result of that regulatory framework. So, you know, we're operating in a regulatory framework in most provinces, that was developed in the 1950s or 1960s. It was a regulatory model that was developed for the world where electricity went one way from generation to the end customer. And it isn't yet able to take into account and able to promote, and foster innovation, because that's not what they expected the electricity sector to do in the 1960s. But it's what we're going to have to do in the future. Dan Seguin  34:58 The CEA conducts an annual National Survey to take a pulse of key views on the part of electricity consumers year over year, is customer satisfaction improving? What do customers want from their energy company? Francis Bradley  35:18 That's a great question. You know, we've been conducting research on customer satisfaction and customer attitudes for more than three decades. In fact, it was the first project I worked on, when I joined CEA. So you know, the focus of the survey, it's evolved over time, but the focus continues to be on the satisfaction of the customer. So our general satisfaction: it's essentially been consistent since 2016, with nearly three and four reporting being satisfied with their, their electricity company, we're seeing this trend nationally, and it's been a slow and steady increase. In the 2019 survey, our Customer Satisfaction Index scores have improved, and perceptions on price are holding steady. And we can do a number of things in this study as well, we do something called a net promoter score, which is also another indicator, it has risen over the past two years. And the analysis shows that this is both due to an improvement in the political and economic environments, but as well also as a result of utility action. So generally, customers, what do they want? Well, they want the lights to be on, and they want their bills down. You know, those are theprincipal concerns, even as, as we've been talking about all of the changing future orientations, and all of  the massive change and innovation that we're seeing in the industry, the fundamentals remain the same. And that's reliability and price for the customer. So so far, we've seen what we've seen is that customers are not keen on extras for things, you know, like new technologies, around outage communication, via text messages, and so on. They expect those things to take place, and they expect us to evolve those new technologies, not something that they think they should be necessarily paying more for. Dan Seguin  37:14 Okay, how do we stack up to sectors like banking when it comes to innovation? Francis Bradley  37:20 Yeah, you know, it's I think it's a challenge, that that that we see, because the environment within which we operate, it is changing, It is, you know, I think it's probably we only have mentioned banking, banking isn't a good example, because banking differs from the electricity sector in that the customer has a choice. And so, you know, how does, how does one bank differentiate itself from another and it needs to, but, you know, as we move into a world where customers, may in the future have the opportunity to increasingly self generate, and look at storage opportunities, and so on. I think that's why we're seeing more innovation on the customer side, because the sector does realize that well, you may, you may be a regulated utility, with a defined service territory, there is competition coming in the future, it just looks differently. Dan Seguin  38:23 Francis, how do you help future proof, large utilities? Is it through collaboration and sustainable energy? Can you maybe expand on why this is important? Francis Bradley  38:36 You know, that's, that's a kind of a cool question. So how do you future proof large utilities? I ask it a slightly different way. And that is, how do you future proof any kind of a company, it may be a little bit more challenging, the larger the company, but the challenge is still the same. Right. And that is the tendency for companies and tendency for organizations tendency for governments the tendency for, for individuals, to, you know, to be complacent, and to believe that the current reality will be the reality that you always live with. And so how do you get past that? And I think, you know, that's, I think that's the heart of your question, right? Is how do you, you know, to future proof means you need to recognize that the future is going to be different than than what today is in there for you need to look at getting ahead of the curve. And so how do you do that? Yeah, absolutely. Collaboration is a critical piece. And it's absolutely essential. But you know, one of the things that we've done at CEA is we developed something we called it the the national emerging Issues committee. We brought together from all of our member companies, the large companies, the small companies, the municipally owned ones The Crown corporations, the investor owned companies from all across the country, the individuals who had responsibility for the strategic planning and the future planning for those companies, and we brought them together and had them go through an exercise to develop a series of scenarios of what the future would look like, for our member companies. And so we really was a bit of an exercise at trying to help collectively future proof some of our member companies. And what we came out with was four possible futures of what the industry may look like by 2040. And the whole purpose of that was so that companies could try and figure out what they need to do to be able to be successful in any of those futures. Because, you know, we weren't trying to predict what the future was going to look like, but what we wanted to do was develop scenarios that our member companies, the individual companies, could stress test their plans against. And so you know, that was the whole purpose of that exercise. And, you know, yeah, yes. Why is it important to try and future proof? Well, you know, there's a lot of companies that were once incredibly successful, that didn't anticipate the future. And we want to make sure that that doesn't happen to our member companies, we don't want to be the direct film, or the Kodak, you know, of the electricity space. You know, you remember Kodak, they used to be the preeminent and predominant company in in a photographic space. But, they didn't necessarily future proof. And there's a lot of examples of companies that were incredibly successful and owned their space, but didn't anticipate what the future would look like. Dan Seguin  41:59 The CEA has launched a national campaign to recognize July 10th as national lineworker Appreciation Day. Why was this so important for the CEA? Francis Bradley  42:10 We didn't, unfortunately, we only do one day a year, because every single day, line workers across Canada work to keep the lights flowing to our homes, to our schools, or hospitals, our businesses. You know, these are the highly trained men and women who work on installing and maintaining their complex electricity grids across cities, across provinces across territories, they're often faced with extreme working conditions, line workers are trained to work efficiently, safely, and collaboratively to keep those lights on. In appreciation for their commitment to serve their fellow Canadians, we continue to, to recognize and to support these men and women by celebrating national line worker appreciation day every year. And you know, kind of step back and think about it after a particularly bad storm, or, you know, other other events. Sometimes I scratch my head and wonder if you know, one day is enough. Dan Seguin  43:05 The next one might be a bit polarizing: Canadians from coast to coast to coast, pay a different price on their electricity bill, what factors determine the price Canadians pay for electricity based on the province they live in? Francis Bradley  43:21 So the factors that determine what you pay for electricity, first and foremost, is all about what resources and natural resources are available in the jurisdiction that you're in. To begin with, that's the fundamental now there's lots of other other things that come into play, of course, but at a very basic level, it begins with, what resources do you have, where you are? And how far are you from the resources that are needed to produce electricity. You know, when you look at jurisdictions, in some of the jurisdictions in Western Canada, you know, Saskatchewan and Alberta, for example, they don't have a lot of falling water. And so they don't have the ability that other places in the country do to produce electricity through through hydro resources. So, you know, to begin with, it's first the, the resource endowment of the of the area that you're in. And so, you know, every province because it's provincially based, but every province, it has its own mix of renewable and non renewable electricity resources. And it's a combination of those, that determine what the prices of electricity as is generated. And then on top of that, you know, the, you know, we got need to build infrastructure, equipment, How far away are the lines, what is the age of the infrastructure, and so all of these things come into play. So, you know, the price of electricity is is influenced by both fixed and variable costs. The price of building transmission wires would be an example of a fixed cost, while the price of fuel used for generation is variable if you need fuel to produce your electricity, right, so that changes as well. So, you know, fundamentally access to natural resources and generation facilities determine the electricity costs alongside with population density. So, you know, in remote areas, more infrastructure is required to bring electricity to homes, businesses and communities. And so that infrastructure has to be shared among fewer customers. So that comes into play as well. Dan Seguin  45:35 Oh, key Francis, how about we close off with rapid fire questions? Are you ready? Francis Bradley  45:42 Rapid fire questions? Okay. Dan Seguin  45:45 What is your favorite word? Francis Bradley  45:47 Family. Dan Seguin  45:49 What is the one thing you can't live without? Francis Bradley  45:52 You're kidding. Really? Electricity! Dan Seguin  45:55 What is something that challenges you? Francis Bradley  45:58 Oh, every Sunday: that weekly puzzle on NPR. Dan Seguin  46:01 If you could have one, just one superpower. What would it be? Francis Bradley  46:06 Time Travel! Dan Seguin  46:08 If you could turn back the time and talk to your 18 year old self? What would you tell them? Francis Bradley  46:13 How about relax and enjoy the ride? Dan Seguin  46:16 What do you currently find most interesting in your sector? Francis Bradley  46:21 Oh, that's easy. That's the really, really smart people that I get to work with that inspire me every single day. Dan Seguin  46:28 Well, Francis, we reached the end of another episode of The ThinkEnergy podcast. Here's my last question for you. How can our listeners learn more about your association? About you? How can they better connect? Francis Bradley  46:43 Alright, well, my podcast, which is on the future of electricity is called the Flux Capacitor. That's one way. You can reach us through our website at electricity.ca. And on Twitter, my Twitter handle is @BradBradley. Dan Seguin  47:03 Again, thank you so much for joining me today. I hope you had a lot of fun. Cheers. Thank you for joining us today. I truly hope you enjoyed this episode of The ThinkEnergy podcast. For past episodes, make sure you visit our website hydroottawa.com/podcast. Lastly, if you found value in this podcast, be sure to subscribe.

Waterpower is Canada’s most abundant source of clean and renewable electricity. In fact, because of this, Canada is the second largest generator of hydroelectricity in the world. So, what’s next for Canada’s waterpower industry? Is there untapped potential? What are the plans for growth nationally and what influence does it have on the world stage? Our special guest, Anne-Raphaëlle Audouin, President and CEO of WaterPower Canada, helps us demystify the water industry. Related Content & Links: https://hydroottawa.com/ Websites: waterpowercanada.ca Twitter: @WaterPowerCA LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/canadian-hydropower-association/   Transcript: Dan Seguin  00:02 Hey, everyone, welcome back. This is the ThinkEnergy podcast, one of Canada's oldest hydroelectric generating station was commissioned right here in the nation's capital in 1891. Located in the heart of downtown Ottawa, is a stone throws away from the parliament building. Chaudière Falls is still providing clean and renewable electricity today, nearly 130 years after it went into service. While hydroelectricity first powered our great country, it was fossil fuel that became the dominant energy source of the 20th century. But it seems that what was old is new again. And cleaner electricity is making a comeback in a big way. I'm convinced it will be the energy source that powers the 21st century. Because Canada is a water rich country, it's not surprising that water power is Canada's most abundant source of clean, and renewable electricity. It provides more than 60% of our country's total electricity, with an installed capacity soon exceeding 85,000 megawatts. As such, Canada is the second largest generator of hydroelectricity in the world after China. To reduce Canada's emissions of greenhouse gases that cause climate change, we must strategically reduce our reliance on fossil fuels and increase the amount of electricity we produce from non-emitting and renewable energy resources. Hydroelectricity produces no air pollution, and has ultra-low greenhouse gas emissions, especially for those stations that are run of the river. From a full lifecycle assessment basis, Canada's hydro power is amongst the lowest emitting resources available and like Chaudière falls proves hydro power assets can last well over 100 years if properly maintained, making them very cost effective long term investments. Canada is already a leader in hydro power generation, but it has a potential to more than double its current capacity, thanks to its abundant, untapped water power resource. Contrary to popular opinion, Canadian hydro power is cost competitive, which helps keep rates low for customers. In fact, provinces with the highest hydro power installed capacity tend to have the lowest electricity costs. So here's today's big question: What's next for Canada's water power industry? What are the plans for growth nationally? And what influence does it have on the world stage? Our special guest today will help demystify the water industry: Waterpower Canada's president and CEO, Anne-Raphaëlle Audouin. Perhaps you can start by telling us a bit about yourself, what drew you to your current role, and how you became an advocate for renewable energy, particularly waterpower. Anne-Raphaëlle Audouin  04:04 I think what really brought me to waterpower is a mixed bag of training and experiences. I specialized in environmental law at school. So my passion has always been sustainability and environmental protection. And after graduating, I had the opportunity to work for justice for a bit mostly focusing on mining projects. But that kind of took me to the next you know, job which was to work for Hatch, an international engineering firm, where I worked on international project projects across the world as an environmental and social impact management specialist. So that's where I got my hands dirty in terms of really seeing how projects are done from start to finish the whole pre-feasibility to commissioning. So that was very, very good, a great experience over about four years. And then I kind of switched a little bit - wanting to have a broader approach to sustainability. So not just look at projects, but also look at corporate sustainability. How do you integrate that thinking into your processes, the way you work with your employees? And also how do you continue to obviously implement the best procedures on projects. And so I looked at other opportunities. And I was then hired by what was then called the Canadian Hydropower Association, which we rebranded about two years ago as Waterpower Canada. So that was my first real exposure to the water power industry. Now, about seven years ago, I'd say, which, you know, time flies, as they say, but it's been a great experience, because it really allowed me to bring my legal experience and my passion for sustainability in my role as an advocate for renewable energy. Dan Seguin  06:01 What is the mission of Waterpower Canada? And what kind of initiatives is it pursuing to advance and support hydro power, nationally, and even internationally, Anne-Raphaëlle Audouin  06:13 So we are a national trade association. So our mission as an organization is really to promote and actively advocate for hydropower. That means, you know, promoting the existing assets, the existing fleet, promoting the attributes, what it does for Canadians what it does for the country in general, and also promoting future developments, be it sometimes reinvestment in the fleet through refurbishment redevelopments, or, of course, as well, Greenfield, Greenfield projects. So nationally that's really our focus is to bring awareness, I always say my job is 50%, government relations, 50% communications, and they tend to marry in the sense that you're always communicating in this field, right, you're always trying to bring more knowledge and more awareness about your sector, no matter who you're talking to. But you aim it a different way, depending on kind of where you focus, what you focus on. And then internationally, we definitely focus more and more on, on working with the US in terms of leveraging the clean exports of hydro power to the US. It's not a new thing. You know, it's been ongoing for decades. And it's been a huge source of wealth for Canada and for certain provinces in particular. But it is something that we see as an opportunity in the future because the US has a pretty emission intensive electricity sector. And they're looking at decarbonizing similar to us, right, but they don't have necessarily all the attributes ready to go that that we can offer in Canada, and we are very connected north-south. So it is it is almost a self-fulfilling prophecy in the sense of being able to send us clean electrons across the border, without too many too many hurdles. So we were also kind of deploying that kind of efforts internationally. Dan Seguin  08:15 In Canada, we know about the environmental benefits of hydro power, in terms of renewable energy, cleaner air, and less pollution, overall, perhaps less known lies under the surface, and the impact of these facilities, particularly turbines can have on fish and other water species. Can you talk a bit about what the industry is doing to contribute to the recovery of endangered, threatened and other species at risk? Anne-Raphaëlle Audouin  08:47 The first thing I'll say is that our sector has been around for more than a century. So any impact that we have is very well understood, and has been very well studied. And there's been a lot of research going into avoidance or when you cannot avoid an impact, mitigation, right, which is the rule for sure. So in terms of fish habitats, in particular, I'll give you an example which is something I've learned through my career working within the water power sector. And it's quite interesting and it happens across the nation right from coast to coast to coast, but you have requirements that are set by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and also of course, by your local regulating bodies, that you know, operate at different levels. And those you know, dictate kind of the measures that you have to put in place and in many cases when you have a hydro site, runoff river or reservoir, you tend to have offsets and you know protocols or fish habitat banking is what we call and without getting into the you know the terminology of you know, that we use with an industry, but through those techniques, you actually have a great opportunity to operate a site that now has a greater fish population that what you found when you actually started with your Greenfield project, and that has been seen and studied. And there's been a lot of, you know, case studies presented on this, where, you know, different fish species actually respond very well to habitat banking. And, they're thriving, more than, you know, maybe the conditions that they were having before the hydro site was developed. So it's that that's just an example. And of course, it's a great success story, but it's not to overshadow the fact that, yes, we operate in water, we do have impacts, and there's always, and they will always be room for improvements. And so a lot of research above and beyond this protocols and, and systems that we implement. A lot of research is actually invested in making sure that the first rule is to avoid impacts, and you don't turn to mitigation right away. Dan Seguin  11:10 When you envision the future of hydro power, what do you see? And what are some of the most exciting things that the industry is doing? Or that Waterpower Canada is spearheading? Anne-Raphaëlle Audouin  11:23 So, you know, with COVID-19, of course, the landscape is different now. But I'm going to put that aside, and for the only reason that we don't know what's going to happen, right, we don't know what's going to happen post COVID the ramifications how long it's going to last. So kind of crystal balling the future on this is a bit of a risky exercise. But if I if I said that crisis aside, what was really exciting, just you know, over the past few years, and what we were lining up and gearing up to, to work on was the huge wave of refurbishment and redevelopment. The average age of a hydropower facility in Canada is 50 years. And that's about the same in the US, right? Our assets are what we call generational assets. Which is great, because you can refurbish them, you know, throughout generations, and it's yours to keep for decades and decades and decades. But what it also means is that every once in a while you have to invest, and inject those capital reinvestments so that you can continue to operate your fleet. And also, you know, modernize the fleet. So that's very exciting. Because no matter what happens with the global pandemic situation,  this is going to happen, I don't know if it's going to happen within the next year, or now within the next five years. But what it means is that it's going to inject billions in the Canadian economy, it's going to sustain a lot of jobs. And it's going to help us decarbonize, you know, further, we already have about an 80%, non-emitting electricity grid, thanks to Hydro and other renewables, and thanks to nuclear, but of course, there's more room for improvement. And so anything you can do to leverage your existing fleet and just pull out those clean electrons  is good news in a very exciting. Dan Seguin  13:15 What do you think is the biggest myth or misunderstanding about water power? Anne-Raphaëlle Audouin  13:20 You know, I, there are quite a few. So but it raises my blood pressure when I think about all of them, so I'll just focus on one. But what I what I hear often and above and beyond the lack of knowledge, generally speaking, I think it's always mind boggling to hear that people don't necessarily know or understand the role that waterpark plays in our in our generation mix. But above and beyond that, I think that the biggest misunderstanding is the fact that people really assume that hydro is an old, dusty, non-innovative technology, because we've been around for so long. And it is actually really, really incorrect because we've been around for so long because we are extremely innovative because we are extremely fine tuning research. Every corner that we take, right, and if we weren't innovative, and if we weren't investing in digitalization and new systems, we wouldn't have survived. And so I always say that the original clean tech in Canada is water power, and is the most enduring one, which is a pretty impressive fact. Dan Seguin  14:33 The hydro power sector contributes more than $30 billion to the Canadian economy and supports a labor force 130,000 strong. What kind of growth does waterpower Canada foresee in the future? Anne-Raphaëlle Audouin  14:47 So just through the refurbishments and redevelopments that was talking about earlier. This is going to trigger a huge growth in the fleet because with no major new and harmful impacts with, you know, a pretty reasonable injection of funds into your fleet, you can actually get a lot more generation out of an existing site. So that's very exciting. And, it's going to trickle down in terms of economic ramifications. But what we will always kind of try and advocate for is to not let go of Greenfield hydro. And, and the exciting thing about hydro is it comes in many shapes and forms. So you don't have to just focus on large hydro reservoir, you also have run of the river of all sizes , by the way, because a lot of people assume that run off river is small hydro, but you can have 1000 megawatt, run of the river facilities, right, which is pretty big. But what's really exciting too, and we hear about more and more these days is pump storage. So we, you know, we didn't focus too much on pump storage, I think as a nation in the past, because we didn't really have to, we had so many easily developable sites run of the river, reservoir and reservoir is embedded storage, right. So it's a  great way to have on demand clean electricity. But now more and more, we're looking at exciting projects that are investing in pumped storage, and  its across Canada, as well, there's a project in Ontario, another one in Alberta, but pump storage is basically a closed loop hydro system where you have elevation, and you take advantage of that elevation to bring water down, and then back up depending on cost of electricity and low demand. So that you can meet peak load requirements, and also reduce your expenditure by managing that curve, in a very smart way. So it is it is very innovative. It is it is something that again has existed for many, many years. It's nothing new. But we had we haven't really invested a lot in this technology in Canada. So far, it's much more common in the US. But I see this coming more and more top of mind. Dan Seguin  17:19 Hydro power infrastructure is designed to withstand floods, and often plays an important role in flood mitigation and management. We've learned that in Ottawa the hard way in 2017, and 2019. Has climate resilience and adapting to the impacts of climate change been front of mind, for Canada's electricity producers? Where do you see making the biggest impacts? Anne-Raphaëlle Audouin  17:46 So yeah, we are investing a lot in climate change research. And I'd say it should be a priority for any sector, probably in the world. So there's a lot of research going on, we are partnering with modeling agencies, like , who helped us, you know, understand, not just the impacts on the hydropower fleet, but kind of bring in external factors as well that are going to affect climate change. The difficulty and the challenge in the country that's as big as Canada is the fact that your impacts are not going to be one general, one size fits all for the sector. So you won't be able to use general categorization for your industry, you're going to have to get regions, of course. And I remember actually a few years ago, during the floods that were happening in Ontario and Quebec, my members in BC, were saying that they were actually observing low levels in their reservoirs. And so that just speaks to the fact that it's not just a small difference, you have an extreme event happening in one side of the country, and another extreme event as a drought on the other side of the country. So what that means is you have to be extremely flexible. And people have to design especially when they refurbish and when they build new sites with climate change in mind every step of the way. Dan Seguin  19:08 You've touched on this earlier Anne-Raphaëlle, hydro power has been around for more than 100 years. What does the untapped potential in Canada look like? And what are some of the innovations within the sector that makes it even more attractive? Anne-Raphaëlle Audouin  19:27 Yeah. So that's one of the other misconceptions that I was alluding to earlier on a previous question. When that when I talk to Canadians and also to policymakers, sometimes they tell me Well, you know, yes, we've got a lot of hydro power in Canada, it's more than 60% of our generation. But surely, because it's so big, we must be tapped out. There must not be any more hydro to develop. And it couldn't be further from the truth. We actually have a lot of water In Canada, we've got good innovation, great sights still to develop. So our untapped potential is actually more than double our existing installed capacity. So we've got about 85,000 megawatts of current installed capacity. So you can, you can only imagine what we could do if we were to just develop a portion of the untapped technical potential. And, and the great news about that now, I always emphasize that when I when I speak at conferences, or  when I have discussions with government, and stakeholders in general is to say that, that potential is not just a reality in in one province, it's a reality across the country. So when we look at decarbonizing, electrifying, all of those great things that you know are happening are going to happen, you know, over the next few years, it's just a must to look at what you could do with your hydro resources in your province or in your territory, because it's there, it exists. Dan Seguin  21:01 Technology is enhancing digitization, and automation of hydro power plants to realize their full potential. What are some of the digital solutions around monitoring, maintenance, and service that you see the industry benefiting from either now or the near future? Anne-Raphaëlle Audouin  21:22 So  I hear a lot about virtual reality, and also artificial intelligence in my sector. And of course, they're two different things, but they tap into that new world of technologies that can help you operate your site in a different way. I think anything that's going to allow us to have remote access to our sites, and that means from a controlling operation. Also, from a supply chain perspective - actually COVID-19 brought one positive from my perspective, which is the fact that we're leveraging tools, more and more that allow us to do remote inspection, for example, because of course, during the pandemic, we couldn't actually go to two warehouses and inspect equipment as it was coming in from China, wherever across the world, right? You had to just wait until it arrived on site. And sometimes we're talking big pieces of furniture, now just a screw and a hammer. So just having tools that really allow you to get in and take a full scope, engineering, look at your equipment, as it comes in before it is delivered is a huge progress, and those tools exists. And that was a huge discovery, I think for me, because I wasn't aware that technology was that far ahead, already ready to respond. Another example, which is always interesting, because I've toured quite a few hydro sites. And I remember at one of the oldest sites in Canada, you know, we were looking at the control room: tons of switches, you know, probably a room that could probably accommodate eight to 10 people at one time. And, and the operator was saying, well, we refurbished and now the person can actually control everything from his living room at home, and is that his laptop, because it's all integrated, and the system is talking to that control room here on site. And that's all it takes. So automation is definitely going to be needed in the future. But it doesn't mean that we won't need, you know, physical, you know, staff and people to manage, because, of course, it's still going to be a huge requirement, but it is more efficient. And that is every day that that kind of innovation happens. Dan Seguin  23:44 You indicated earlier that waterpower in Canada provides more than 90% of our renewable power and 60% of our overall electricity supply. Canada is blessed with an abundance of untapped potential, residing both in existing sites and new developments. Any thoughts on the pros and cons of refurbishment and redevelopment opportunities versus the development of new projects? Anne-Raphaëlle Audouin  24:15 Yes. So I mean, it's all case specific: that's the obvious answer. And so what makes sense for a site may not make sense for another one, meaning that, you know, we've got a lot of members that are actually assessing a specific site and considering everything like from decommissioning, which is, you know, turning off the lights basically and saying, Okay, this asset has played its role and that we're going to return the site back to nature. When the economy, you know, just circumstances or environmental or just the general circumstances surrounding a specific site dictate certain decisions. So I think it's not very common that, you know, people would decide to decommission a hydro site because most of the time, even if it's just a little bit of generation, when you've had a site for 80-90 years, and you've refurbished it and maintained it over the years, it's still it's still a great provider of clean electricity. It's still a money-maker for the utility or for the independent power producer. So it's still definitely a great benefit to have within your fleet. But so I don't see any downside to refurbishment, or redevelopment. I think it's a low hanging fruit for electrification, it's something that's going to happen. It's just a question of when, and Greenfield hydro is not going anywhere. I think it's just, let's focus on what we can do first, which is refurbishment. It's the obvious thing to do and it's needed. And in a decade or two, we'll probably see another wave of investment in Greenfield hydro. Dan Seguin  25:55 Before I forget, are you able to demystify for our listeners what Greenfield hydro is? Anne-Raphaëlle Audouin  26:03 Greenfield hydro means you take a site that is completely natural. So an untouched site, and you develop a hydro site. And it's a terminology that can be used for any industry, not just hydro. So you can say Greenfield mining Greenfield wind, it just means that you start with a site that hasn't been touched. Dan Seguin  26:24 Hydro power can provide abundant low carbon energy, with its storage from reservoir and pump storage. As the only renewable form of baseload electricity, how essential is hydro power to leading Canada's transition away from fossil fuels, while maximizing environmental benefits. Anne-Raphaëlle Audouin  26:46 It's not only essential, it's critical. We always say that if we didn't have what a power within our generation mix, we would be in in a terrible situation as a country, because again, 60% of our overall electricity generation is coming from that big renewable giant, which is water power. So you know, if we take a step back and consider for one second the world we live in, in Canada, without water power, it would be quite different, and it would probably be much dirtier in terms of emissions. So we start with a huge asset, and a huge advantage compared to some countries and you know, people from across the world come to Canada to actually learn about our mostly non-emitting electricity grid. How did you do it? What are the systems you put in place? What is your regulatory environment? How did you get to where you are now? But of course, it's not to say that we are perfect because we're not we've got high emission, or emission intensive sectors. Some provinces are doing better than others for historical reasons, you know, different decisions. And I think we've been blessed with an abundance of natural resources across the nation. And so we shouldn't point fingers. It's really not about that. It's just about Okay, how do we get better? How do we clean up our system? So that we move away from, you know, negative emissions and move toward electrification, which is the priority? Right, the easiest thing to do is to turn to electrifying our transportation, of course, and then buildings, and hydropower is there, you know, we just need the right, you know, economic environment, the right signals from governments, in terms of regulatory streamlining, for example, in terms of regulations that incentivize investment in hydro, and the sector will respond because we've got the resources to develop and do more to decarbonize Canada. Dan Seguin  28:46 You've touched on this earlier, but wondering if we can explore further. Both Canada and the United States are looking for ways to reduce carbon emissions to meet greenhouse gas reduction targets. With 60% of US electricity still being generated from coal and gas powered thermal plants, is Canada's clean, renewable hydro power becoming an attractive option for Border States? How are those partnerships negotiated? Has it been an easy sell? Are those states coming to you? Anne-Raphaëlle Audouin  29:22 So it's as we discussed, yes, it's been something that has been done for years. So it's nothing new under the sun. But I think it's becoming more top of mind because big players like the mayor of New York, you know, for the past year has been saying, you know, we want to import a lot of clean and renewable hydro from Quebec. And he's right you know, it's a few hours north of his of his state. It's available there. There are big surpluses in Quebec it's the cheapest electricity you can buy not just in Canada - in North America. And it's a source of wealth for this province. And it's the same story in Manitoba. You know, who sends electricity to Minnesota and other states and neighboring that border on that side of the country, with new transmission lines going through the approval process in each of those jurisdictions. So I think this is definitely going to be more talked about in the future. I think it's probably rising to news headlines more and more because of politics. And depending on the political environment on either side of the border, it can be framed as a positive story, or it can be framed as a negative story, but for all intents and purposes for Canadians and for Americans, it is a great, great thing to do, because you decarbonize the system, you have a low electricity cost, and on top of everything, it's clean and renewable, so why wouldn't you do it? Dan Seguin  30:51 How about we close off with rapid fire questions? Are you ready? Anne-Raphaëlle Audouin  30:55 Okay. Dan Seguin  30:57 What is your favorite word? Anne-Raphaëlle Audouin  31:01 Um,you know, I'm a Francophone. But there's a word that I really like in English, not necessarily for its meaning, but for the sound it has on the tongue. It's serendipity. I just find it funny. It rolls well. Dan Seguin  31:14 What is the one thing you can't live without? Anne-Raphaëlle Audouin  31:17 Probably in equal measures: my family and coffee. Is that an acceptable answer? Dan Seguin  31:24 What is something that challenges you? Anne-Raphaëlle Audouin  31:29 As a mom, with a young family, I'm not a big fan of the terminology, you know, work life balance, but just trying to set some time for what's important, and not being consumed by work or other things. So just knowing your limits, I think is going to be a lifelong exercise for me. Dan Seguin  31:51 If you could have one superpower, what would it be? Anne-Raphaëlle Audouin  31:55 Oh, that's a good one. Probably traveling through time. Dan Seguin  32:00 Okay. If you could turn back time, and talk to your 18 year old self? What would you tell her? Anne-Raphaëlle Audouin  32:08 That you're on the right path, you know, continue to travel as much as you can. And, and learn from people who want to mentor you, you know, on your path  to whatever you want to achieve. Because you know, people want to help each other. That's what I've learned. They're always happy to share insights. And most the time you just have  to ask and people will be there to help you. Dan Seguin  32:33 And lastly, what do you currently find most interesting in your sector? Anne-Raphaëlle Audouin  32:40 I think all the excitement around the electrification, the fact that we know this is probably the next Industrial Revolution. It's hard to really tangibly feel what this is going to look like. But it's going to affect everybody in a good way. And there's not going to be one sector that's going to be left to the side because we're all going to need to collaborate. And so just that aspect of working together and being able to find new ways to revolutionize a system that has been implemented for years and years is very exciting. Dan Seguin  33:13 Last question for you. How can our listeners learn more about your organization? How can they connect? Anne-Raphaëlle Audouin  33:20 So website is always the first stop: waterpowercanada.ca We're very active on social media too, so they can find us on YouTube. They can find us on Twitter and on LinkedIn. And don't be a stranger because we love hearing from people. Dan Seguin  33:39 Thank you for joining us today. I truly hope you enjoyed this episode of The ThinkEnergy podcast. For past episodes, make sure you visit our website hydroottawa.com/podcast. Lastly, if you found value in this podcast, be sure to subscribe. Cheers, everyone.

Roughly 50 per cent of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in Canada are from municipalities. This means that cities have the opportunity to make a huge impact when it comes to shifting and improving energy habits. In this episode, Andrea Flowers – the Senior Project Manager for Environmental Programs, Planning, Infrastructure & Economic Development for the City of Ottawa – tells us all about the steps that Ottawa is taking, through an action plan called Energy Evolution, to reduce GHG emissions from the community by 100 per cent by 2050 and from City operations by 100 per cent by 2040. Related Content & Links: Websites: Visit ottawa.ca/climatechange to learn more about what Ottawa is doing to reduce GHG emissions and to build a more resilient city in the face of climate change.  Visit ottawa.ca/energyevolution or the Energy Evolution page on Engage Ottawa to learn more about Energy Evolution. Complete a survey to help Energy Ottawa understand the barriers you face to acting on climate change and subscribe to Engage Ottawa to be notified when new content is added.  https://hydroottawa.com/   Transcript: Dan Seguin  00:41 Well, everyone, welcome back. This is another episode of The ThinkEnergy podcast. In April 2019, the City of Ottawa, the nation's capital, declared a climate emergency. It was this declaration that signaled to the community at large that the municipal government was taking climate action very, very seriously. And that is why ramping up with its climate change master plan, its climate resiliency strategy, and a special project called Energy Evolution. It's clear the city recognize that municipalities can influence significant change over their own emissions. In fact, roughly 50% of greenhouse gas emissions in Canada are from municipalities. That means every town and every city in Canada can make a huge impact. By tackling climate change at the municipal level, on the ground sort of speak, municipalities can not only improve the quality of life for their residents, but also reduce greenhouse gas emissions and save money in operations and energy costs. Today, we're going to focus on Energy Evolution. This is the action plan for how the City of Ottawa will meet 100% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from its operations of the municipal government by 2040, and from the community, the entire city by 2015. In short, its vision is clear to transform Ottawa into a thriving city of the future powered by clean, renewable energy. Realizing Energy Evolution's vision will require concerted efforts and collaboration across all sectors of the community like never before. The strategy is guided by three components: reduce energy use through conservation and efficiency, increase the supply renewable energy through local and regional production, and prioritize the procurement of clean and renewable energy. Here is today's big question. How will Ottawa the nation's Capital go about to set its emission reduction targets. And what was the process to creating a climate action plan? Joining me today is a very special guest, Andrea Flowers, who is leading the development of the city of Ottawa's renewable energy strategy. Andrea, can you tell us a bit about you, the work that you do, and why global warming, climate change and clean energy means so much to you? Andrea Flowers  03:37 Well, I have more than 15 years strategic climate change planning, policy development, project management, stakeholder engagement and public education. I've worked in the nonprofit private and public sector at the municipal, provincial and federal level. And over the last year and a half or so I've had the privilege of leading the City of Ottawa's as climate change and resiliency team. I think that climate change is the political and moral challenge of our time, and I think we all have a responsibility to learn about it and take action on it. Dan Seguin  04:07 Can you tell us a bit about why Ottawa declared a climate emergency in 2019 and why the city needs a community energy transition strategy, like energy evolution? Andrea Flowers  04:20 Ottawa declared a climate emergency to name, frame and deepen our commitment to protecting the economy or ecosystem in our community from climate change. Worldwide, climate scientists agree that fast rising global temperatures have created a climate emergency, and that we need to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius in order to avoid catastrophic climate change. At this point, there's hardly a week that goes by without hearing about climate change in the news. And so, cities across the country and around the world have declared climate change in order to take action on this issue and raise the profile of it. Since cities have an influence over about half the emissions in Canada, I think Ottawa like all other cities needs a strategy like energy evolution to respond to climate change. I also think that cities like all other levels of government have a responsibility to play in the leadership role of catalyzing the broader community, and helping us all collectively rise to the challenge. In Ottawa Energy Evolution is our strategy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the community 100% by 2050. In line with that global science and energy evolution hopes to transform Ottawa into a thriving city powered by clean renewable energy. But realizing Energy Evolution's vision will require concerted efforts and collaboration across all sectors of the community. Dan Seguin  05:48 Andrea, wondering if you can expand on the scope and scale of changes required for Ottawa to reduce GHG emissions below the 2020 levels by 2050. And what are the short, mid and long term targets? Andrea Flowers  06:07 I'll start with the second part of the question for context. So as part of Council's approval of the new climate change master plan in Ottawa, short, mid and long term targets for greenhouse gas emissions were set, and they align with those inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change targets. So the IPCC targets to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. So community wide, the short term target is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 43% by 2025 and 68% by 2040 and 100% by 2050. And then the scope scale and the short timelines associated with those are really difficult to meet. I would say that meeting those targets will require both unprecedented action and Investment across the community and around the world. So to give you a sense of what that scope and scale means, we're going to have to phase out almost all fossil fuels. That means gas, natural gas and diesel, we're going to nearly fully electrify our heating and cooling systems are going to have to nearly fully electrify or go to zero emission transportation systems. For our personal vehicles or commercial fleets and our transit systems, we're going to have to start using more waste heat and renewable natural gas to meet our heating demands. And we're going to have to generate and store enough renewable energy, particularly electricity mostly from wind and solar to meet the demand and offset emissions that we currently have from Ontario's provincial grid. Dan Seguin  07:51 based on your analysis, what are the biggest contributors to Ottawa's greenhouse gas emissions and how challenging will it be to shift away from those, Andrea Flowers  08:03 let me be a bit of background. So Ottawa undertakes greenhouse gas emissions inventories every year so that we know where our emissions come from. And in 2018, the most recent year that we have right now, roughly 90% of the emissions in Ottawa came from the building and transportation sectors, basically how we heat and cool our homes and how we get around the city. And if we look at those emissions, and the contributing sources of emissions, then natural gas is by far the largest contributor in the community, followed by gasoline and diesel. Of course, given the scope and scale of the transportation system in our building sector, it's going to be really difficult to shift away from these emission sources. governments don't have control direct control over emissions, although of course they can influence them between policy and regulation or incentives and disincentives, but success is going to depend to a large extent on private action. It's going to take billions of dollars of public and private capital to make community wide investments over the next 30 years. And to meet those targets that we set, the upfront investments over the next 10 years will be the highest. But the good news is that our financial analysis shows there'll be a net financial benefit to society at large starting in early 2030, probably around 2032 when the net annual savings start to outpace the revenues generated and the savings generated compared to the annual investments required. And beyond the financial challenges. There's lots of federal and provincial governmental, regulatory barriers that prevent us from doing some of the actions required in the model. And then even beyond this, of course, there's risk that the public won't make or accept the types of changes required. And I'm cognizant of the fact that there's a huge Equity and Inclusion risk for this transition. We need to find ways that everybody can participate in climate solutions, and not just the people who can afford it. Dan Seguin  10:14 In your view, do you feel that public acceptance is a challenge? Can anyone participate in climate solutions? Are there any barriers? Andrea Flowers  10:23 I'm a champion in this sector. I also own an EV. And I cycle almost everywhere. I've done deep retrofits on my home, and they're all really challenging choices to make for all kinds of reasons: where to start, how to prioritize how to actually do it. You're highlighting some of the other challenges in public acceptance and just our ability to make these changes. Dan Seguin  10:50 The intergovernmental panel on climate change has said that limiting global warming to 1.5 Celsius is possible. But will require far reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society. In order to achieve this at the local level, what type of changes can we expect from the city and even from ourselves Andrea Flowers  11:14 Well, when we look at Energy Evolution, we've broken it down in a total of five sectors on to figure out how we can achieve a 100% reduction by 2050. The five sectors are land use buildings, transportation, waste, and renewable natural gas and electricity. And four out of the five sectors really rely on land use as sort of a base element to the whole model. If we look at the model itself, the building and transportation sectors account for roughly 75% of all the cumulative emission reductions from now until 2050. And the remaining 25% will have to come from waste and renewable natural gas and electricity sectors. The model itself then takes those five sectors and it breaks it down into 39 actions. And those 39 actions tell us sort of the scale of change required in each of the actions. If we think about what the top five emissions are, I said 75% of the reductions will come from the buildings and transportation sector. So it's no surprise that four of these five come from those areas includes by far the largest action, which is to electrify personal electric vehicles. So about 20% of the 100% of emissions that we need to achieve will come from the electrification of personal vehicles. The second most important action is to divert organics and create renewable natural gas so we need to divert our our kitchen waste our yard and leaf waste away from landfills where we create very a powerful GHG emission called methane. And we need to divert both methane that's produced out landfills and methane, which we could capture through anaerobic digesters and create renewable natural gas. So luckily the city is right now doing a new solid waste master plan. And there they are seeking input on what to do with our organics. The third most important action is to retrofit existing residential buildings and the fourth is to retrofit existing commercial buildings. Now, we're not talking about just air sealing and new windows or insulation in the attic. We're talking about deep retrofits, we're talking about retrofits which will reduce natural gas consumption by about 60%, or at least our thermal or heating demand by about 60%. And we're talking about reducing our electrical demand by about 50%. So deep deep retrofits throughout the residential and commercial and institutional sectors, and then the fifth, like the top five action is to transition to zero emission commercial fleets. And, again, this will likely be electrification of commercial fleets. But we haven't ruled out fuel cells either. Dan Seguin  14:23 Ottawa has defined its greenhouse gas emission targets and states that one of the ways it will meet them is by increasing the supply of renewable energy through local and regional production and prioritizing the procurement of clean renewable energy. Can you walk us through the targets and how the city will increase the supply of renewable energy? Andrea Flowers  14:48 Well, achieving the 100% scenario will definitely put an increasing demand on electricity production and the delivery of electricity. So right now renewable energy projects are required to contribute about 8.5% towards the 100% scenario by 2050. Now, the targets are aggressive. So to meet our 2030 targets under the 100% scenario, collectively, we'll have to install a significant amount of clean, renewable energy. We're talking 631 megawatts of solar in the residential, commercial and utility sectors, but 100 megawatts in wind, 18 megawatts in hydro power, and three megawatts in biogas. And by 2030, we would also have to increase our storage to about 73 megawatts to reduce curtailment of renewable generation from 90% to 85%. And those, those are all our 2030 targets, they become even more aggressive in 2050. So how are we going to do it? What kind of things are we thinking about? Well, sort of more broadly in the community. We love to ramp up solar generation at a faster pace for at least the next five years, initially through a rooftop strategy, because on site net metering is the only available opportunity to connect with renewable energy generation to the grid. And then also because of the relative scarcity of renewable fuels, fuel based cogeneration can't be installed unless there is a rationale for doing so, to reduce the redundancy requirement or to support specific electricity system requirements. Existing co-gen plants that don't meet these criteria should retire as opportunities arise. And we'll be looking for a sizable amount of battery or other powered storage capacity to ensure that variable renewable generation can be shifted as we as periods of surplus, you know, vary between high demand and the relative curl curtailment of renewable generation. Dan Seguin  16:59 What are some of the best benefits that your project Energy Evolution will bring to the city and its residents. Does it include economic development and maybe...what else? Andrea Flowers  17:10 There's lots of benefits associated with Energy Evolution beyond the obvious reducing our greenhouse gas emissions. Certainly economic development is a key one. From that perspective, supporting Ottawa's local businesses in the transition towards a low carbon economy will help companies reduce their operating costs. And it represents an opportunity to create good quality local jobs and attract investment. Right now. ottawans spend about $3 billion a year on energy costs and most of that leaves the city so if we can generate more energy locally, we can keep a greater share of the energy dollars within our local economy. Canada's clean energy sector is growing faster than almost any other sector and it's attracting 10s of billions of dollars in investment every year. Already are clean energy sector accounts for about 300,000 jobs in Canada. And as part of the financial analysis, and part of the energy and emissions modeling we did for energy pollution. We looked at job creation and we predict for for building retrofits alone, we could generate as many as 38,000 jobs here in Ottawa. And then to your other part of your question beyond economic development, there's there's also other benefits. From a public health perspective, we expect that air quality could improve as we move away from fossil fuels causing a reduction in health related effects like heart disease and breathing problems. We hope that physical and mental health would improve as we get out and cycle and walk more instead of using personal vehicles. We may see an improvement in sleep patterns as the reduced noise levels from vehicles as we transition from fuels to electric vehicles which are much quieter. And as we insulate buildings to improve our heating. And then finally, there's also benefits associated with energy security and resiliency. With an increasing number of extreme events like ice storms and tornadoes. increasing our local renewable generation and supply provides affordable energy to residents and businesses and could help  with uninterrupted levels of service during those extreme weather events. Dan Seguin  19:28 Through an energy lens, what role will conservation and efficiency play in lowering greenhouse gas emissions for Ottawa? Where is that low hanging fruit? Andrea Flowers  19:42 Well, Energy Evolution's model is built on a conservation first scenario. It uses an integrated model approach. So if conservation doesn't happen first, we will effectively just run out of zero emission energy. The model looks at conservation and efficiencies across all sectors including Buildings transportation, electricity and natural gas. And really the low hanging fruit in that list is the electrification of private vehicles. So a gas power train has a fuel to wheels efficiency in the 20-30% range, whereas, a battery electric is more like a 90% efficiency range. So in our modeling, there's no other single measure which conserves as much primary energy as the conversion from gas or diesel to electric vehicles. Dan Seguin  20:30 Not to brag, but Hydro Ottawa has been in the renewable energy business for more than 130 years, and currently has built in clean generation to power a third of the city. Andrea, how important was it to engage with strategic partners like Hydro Ottawa, and Envari energy solutions? Andrea Flowers  20:52 Yeah. Well, first of all, thank you. It's, it's amazing that hydro Ottawa and their subsidiaries have become such a leader. In green energy and it is critical for us to work with partners like Hydro Ottawa. Throughout the development of energy evolution, we've worked with more than 200 strategic partners and technical experts and we know that the city alone can't achieve the scale of emission reductions required and that everybody has a role to play. Fortunately, Hydro Ottawa and its subsidiaries and Envari and Portage Power have been there. Since the beginning of the energy evolution process. They've provided input technical expertise, and you've been very generous about creating platforms like this one to amplify the messaging and engage broader audiences. Without Hydro Ottawa, it is highly unlikely that energy evolution could succeed. The 100% GHG reduction scenario foresees electrical demand more than doubling by 2050. So we need to work together to align our planning and forecasting identify opportunities and advocate together for policy changes at the provincial level. It's wonderful that hydro Ottawa has a long history of renewable energy generation and we need to keep expanding it. As I said earlier, local generation is key to meeting our targets since the province doesn't currently have plans to generate electricity with zero emissions grid. And because there's so many opportunities for economic development here locally. Dan Seguin  22:25 The transport sector accounts for approximately a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions and is one of the major sectors where emissions are still rising. Electrification is widely considered an attractive solution for reducing the dependency and environmental impact of road transportation. Where does the city stand with electrification of fleets like buses, EV charging stations, and maybe ebikes. Andrea Flowers  22:55 Now well, I'll go back to the beginning of the question for a minute because if transportation sector accounts for a quarter of global emissions. It's actually quite a bit higher in Ottawa. So community wide, by in 2018. Ottawa's transportation sector accounted for about 44% of Ottawa's GHG emissions. And partly that's because we don't have a large industrial base here in Ottawa, whereas globally, that would play a more significant role. But 44% of emissions in Ottawa are coming from the transportation sector. And in order to meet our 100% scenario target, transportation, we'll need to account for about 37% of our GHG reduction targets emissions. And the city's corporate target is to reduce GHG emissions 100% by 2040. And you'll notice that that's about 10 years earlier than the community. So in the model for our city operations, the model calls for fleets including our own transit and municipal fleets like by-law police ambulance calls for our fleet. To be zero emission by 2030. And then our commercial fleets to be up to can take a bit longer up to 2040. But the transition to zero emission must be a steady and incremental progress. You can't hit the target by backloading the model because then the the emissions are compounding. And although we expect that electrification will be key for the electrification of fleets, we haven't totally ruled out fuel cells. We have however, rolled out internal combustion power trains, even if they use a carbon neutral fuel, because they simply aren't as efficient. In terms of where does the city stand with electrification of our fleets and buses. The city has a corporate policy to include EV chargers at all new facilities and we're considering revising the policy to include EV chargers when we do major renovations or retrofits at City facilities. We continue to grow our own Electric fleet just in the last couple of weeks, the City of Ottawa has purchased four new hyundai konas for bylaw services, and there's some great information on  energyevolution@ottawa.ca about that. And then in terms of public chargers or general stances that we don't want to, we don't want to have any additional barriers to purchasing private electric vehicles. So we want to do what we can to ensure that there is sufficient public charging in municipal facilities and on municipal lands to support that. So the city is installing a new fast charger at Bob McCrory and it'll be a 150 kilowatt fast charger. And then we've partnered with Eydro Ottawa and Envari to install 13 new doubleheader chargers on city right away throughout the city. So those We'll be going in hopefully by the end of 2020. Back to the question around ebikes. We're encouraged by developments in E bikes and E scooters. And they certainly fit broadly under active transportation in the energy evolution strategy. But we haven't yet given them any detailed focus. So there is increasing interest amongst the public and it's a gap that we know we haven't addressed yet. Dan Seguin  26:28 As an example of conservation efficiency, are you able to talk about the city's LED streetlight conversion project and what the results have been? Andrea Flowers  26:38 Well, overall, it's been a resounding success. We've already met our energy and maintenance targets. Maintenance savings have given a knock off reduction in GHG emissions from a reduction in the deployment of service vehicles. And I would say, generally, the project seems to have helped with general widespread acceptance of conservation. And that helps us sell the concept of conservation in other areas across the city and the community as well. By the end of the project, I think that we will have changed more than 58,000 light fixtures to LEDs. And we will have reduced our energy by 60%, reduced GHG emissions by thousand tons per year and our operating costs by close to $5 million. So it's a resounding success. We've also seen co-benefits like reduced light pollution and although I've yet to confirm it with a biologist, I've heard anecdotally that the conversion of LED lights is starting to bring back fireflies into the city because the different color of light makes it easier for the fireflies to communicate amongst themselves. So on my to do list is to confirm that with a biologist but I think it is an interesting little tidbit and I choose to think that it may be true. Dan Seguin  27:54 Okay, you alluded to this earlier, so wondering if you could expand on what role will energy storage have in lowering the city's carbon future. Andrea Flowers  28:06 Thermal storage, renewable natural gas and battery storage all have a role to play in meeting Ottawa's GHG reduction targets. Thermal storage will likely be the most important kind of storage both seasonally and on a shorter term basis. So, seasonally or longer term storage will be important for how we operate geothermal systems and shorter term storage will be more buildings specific and could help us shave peak demands. Although we call exclusively for renewable natural gas in the model,  the gas grid will provide less energy than it does today and it will continue to be a large source of storage likely able to meet all demand without any supply for several weeks. And then finally, we need battery storage and the 100% model for electrical grid stability to manage variable generation. battery storage is required to reduce the curtailment renewable generation during periods of low demand, and although it's not modeled, we see the potential for storage to help with the economic competitiveness of electricity. And this ultimately will be important in helping Ottawa achieve our targets. Dan Seguin  29:15 Okay, Andrea, let's close this off with some rapid fire questions. I hope you're ready. Andrea Flowers  29:23 Ready Dan Seguin  29:24 What is your favorite word? Andrea Flowers  29:27 Zither - such a fun word to say it's a quirky instrument like a harp. You play on your lap and I've had one since a child and it's it's a fun word to say. I played the zither. Dan Seguin  29:41 What is the one thing you can't live without? Andrea Flowers  29:44 My man. Dan Seguin  29:46 What is something that challenges you Andrea Flowers  29:49 the status quo Dan Seguin  29:51 If you had one superpower, just one, what would it be? Andrea Flowers  29:55 Ah the ability to show people the future so that we can really see what the consequences of our actions and our decisions are. Dan Seguin  30:05 If you could turn back time and talk to your 18 year old self, what would you tell her? Andrea Flowers  30:10 Ah, I would say just follow a path of love. And you will find love in all aspects of your life. Trust that the things that you're interested in, will lead you interesting places and that the path might not always be clear, but there will always be something interesting along the way. Dan Seguin  30:34 And lastly, what do you currently find most interesting in your sector? Andrea Flowers  30:39 The intersection between science and politics. It's complex and interconnected and evolving quickly, so it is ever changing. Dan Seguin  30:51 Well, Andrea, we've reached the end of another episode of The ThinkEnergy podcast. I hope you had a lot of fun. Last question for you. How can our listeners learn more about you, your organization, how can they connect? Andrea Flowers  31:05 Well, to be honest, I think that they need to learn less about me and more about the important work that the City is doing and this project in particular Energy Evolution. If you want to learn more about climate change in Ottawa, then you can visit ottawa.ca/climatechange. And there you'll find links to both the mitigation work we do on how to reduce greenhouse gas emissions like Energy Evolution, as well as our adaptation work and how we will build a more resilient future for Ottawa in the face of a changing climate. So, lots of ways and lots of other ways to connect on there, you can go to ottawa.ca/climatechange or ottawa.ca/energyevolution. There you have a chance to sign up for our E newsletter, which focuses on climate change. You can learn more about the projects and how to get involved and You can take a survey on that tells us what kind of barriers you face on implementing climate action. Dan Seguin  32:09 Thank you for joining us today. I truly hope you enjoyed this episode of The ThinkEnergy podcast. For past episodes, make sure you visit our website hydroottawa.com/podcast. Lastly, if you found value in this podcast Be sure to subscribe. Cheers, everyone.

If the Wizard of Oz was remade for the 21st century, Dorothy might now declare: there’s no place like a net-zero home. And she’d be right. But would she need the Wizard to grant her wish for a net-zero home or would Dorothy be able to afford one on her own? In this episode, Kevin Lee – CEO of the Canadian Home Builders Association (CHBA) - tells us what it means for a home or building to be “net-zero,” the pros and cons, and what the CHBA is doing to make net-zero homes an affordable reality for all current and aspiring homeowners. Related Content & Links: https://hydroottawa.com/ Websites: The Canadian Home Builders Association - https://www.CHBA.ca Linkedin: Kevin Lee - https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevin-lee-bbb49782/ Twitter: Kevin Lee - @CHBAKevinLee Transcript Dan Seguin  00:42 Hey, everyone, welcome back to the ThinkEnergy podcast. Dorothy said it best: "There's no place like home." Now... If the Wizard of Oz was remade for the 21st century, Dorothy might now declare there's no place like a net zero home and she'd be right. But would she need the wizard to grant her wish for a net zero home, or would Dorothy be able to afford one on her own? On today's podcast, we're going to talk about the 111 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions that Canadian homes and buildings release into the atmosphere every year. And we're also going to talk about how net zero homes and buildings are combating climate change from foundations to rooftops with each new build. Designed and constructed to produce at least as much energy as they consume, net zero home buildings are up to 80% more energy efficient than typical new homes. The key difference is that a net zero home uses renewable energy to produce the energy it consumes With a growing demand from energy conscious House Hunters looking to make their environmentally responsible choice for one of their biggest life purchases. What do they need to know about purchasing in net zero home? Who are the builders? What impact will net zero home have on the purchase price on their future energy bills? What renewable energy system is the best option? Or are there government subsidies or incentives? In short, how can more and more Canadians take advantage of living greener and more energy efficient? So let's get going with today's big question. Is there any real movement whereby net zero homes will become the new standard in the next decade and what will it take for the industry to get there joining us to shed some light on net zero Homes is the chief executive officer of the Canadian Home Builders Association. Mr. Kevin Lee. Kevin, would you mind giving us a brief description of your background, what the Canadian Home Builders Association does, and why do you think net zero homes and buildings are the future? Kevin Lee  03:25 Well, my background is that I am an engineer with a master's in architecture. And I've worked in the housing fields my entire career, I ran my own consulting business for about 11 years and energy efficient housing, construction and research and development. I also worked for the federal government for several years running housing buildings and community research and development programs, as well as doing running programming like the R-2000 program. The energuide rating system for homes program the eagle energy retrofit homes program. So big background anon and I've been the Chief Executive Officer at the Canadian Home Builders Association for the past seven years at CHBA, as we call it. We represent builders and renovators and developers all across Canada as well as the suppliers and trades and services that support residential construction. And we work together to improve the performance of houses, improve the relations with governments to help. One of the big things we really pushed is housing affordability and making sure people can afford to buy new homes as well as afford to rent homes and there are obviously lots of challenges these days with the cost of housing. So we spent a lot of time on that. And we do have a net zero energy housing council that does work on net zero energy homes and advancing that we have a labelling programmer we have had to label close to 400 houses across the country now over the past couple of few years. And in terms of the future, with respect to net zero, we've always as an industry and as an association been leaders in energy efficiency we do incredibly well in balancing the performance - Houses today are, you know, more than 50% better than they were 25 years ago. Sometimes I hear people say, Oh, they sure don't build houses like they used to do, which I would always respond.: "Well, thank goodness!" We continue to do better and nowhere is that more true than in terms of energy efficiency. How far we're able to go with respect to net zero and under what kind of timeline I would suggest is very much a function of costing and affordability because investing in a net zero home is a great way to invest your money and in your home and there's a lot of benefits, but it's still not cheap. Definitely costs a little bit more and when it comes to regulations, we're always trying to think about affordability. So from the association perspective, or I was trying to say: Okay, well, yes, we want to make homes better, but we also want to make sure people can still afford to buy them. So let's find like most cost effective ways and cost efficient ways. And let's try not especially this day and age, and when we build such good new houses, how do we make sure that we don't increase the cost of houses with every code change that we make? Dan Seguin  06:25 Okay, Kevin, what's the difference between a green home and a net zero home? Kevin Lee  06:31 Well, when we talk about net zero energy homes, you're talking about a house that produces as much energy as it needs over the course of the year to sort of net out at zero, and certainly in Canada with our cold climate, you can expect that in the winter, you're probably going to be using some energy, more solar than you're able to generate, but on other times when you don't need as much energy - Typically in art programs as through solar energy, you're able to create surplus energy that you're able to feed back into the grid and net zero. So that's a net zero energy home. A green home tends to encompass many other things that will almost always encapsulate energy efficiency. But it'll also look at things like green environmental products, especially in different roofing materials, that kind of thing. So green tends to encompass a little bit more than net zero. And while many of so in our, in our case, in our program, we really focus on the energy efficiency piece. So, you know, builders do add a lot of other special features to homes that would be green, but the big differences the green is more about the broader environmental, whereas our net zero work is very focused on the energy efficiency. Dan Seguin  07:45 When building or renovating to net zero standards, what are the key considerations you should start with? Are we talking everything from walls, ventilation, foundation, windows, and more? Kevin Lee  07:59 Oh, absolutely. I mean, certainly when you're driving to get down to basically using close to zero energy, you have to look at everything that uses energy and that can, you know, save energy and be efficient with energy. So every element of the home, as you said, walls, ceilings, foundations, windows, mechanical systems: hugely important. So you have to look at all of it and where do you start? Well, frankly, if you're a homebuyer, you start by looking for a builder with the experience and know how to do this and even through our programs. And we follow, we use the energuide rating system, which is a government of Canada system and label for measuring the energy performance of homes. And there are energy advisories that are certified by the Government of Canada to do that. And we provide those energy advisors additional training, to work with our builders to be experts and getting all the way to net zero. So they're sort of recognized through our program through additional training and education. So really, as a homebuyer or a homeowner, because we now have a retrofit program as well for renovating houses to get to this level. Really it's finding the right finding the right contractor homebuilder, you know, you can look at CHBA.ca. And you can find a list of our rent renovators and our home builders that are certified, they know what they're doing. And they're working very closely with an energy advisor who works on the design because like I said, when you're trying to get to net zero, you're talking about squeezing every ounce of energy you can out of that house. And it's every element. So it's not so much that you start one place. You look at everything. Dan Seguin  09:36 You touched on this earlier, but wondering if you could further demystify for me, how does a net zero home produce as much energy - clean renewable energy - as it consumes? Kevin Lee  09:48 Yeah, well, and I did touch on that earlier. So I'll go back to that. And the idea is that again, especially in Canada, it's a little bit tricky, you know, when it's very cold, you know, you're going to have to use some energy. Typically in our program, the renewal Bull energy that is used is photovoltaics or, you know solar panels, on the roof generating electricity. But when it's when it's really cold, you're probably not going to be able to generate enough energy to meet the entire heating load of the home. As well as all the other loads that are going on: ventilation. We plug a lot of things in too, we're charging a lot of cell phones and all these other things. There's a pretty heavy what we call base load these days as well. So what you're trying to do is make sure that as you look at the course of the whole year, you're producing as much energy as you need. Sometimes you might be producing surplus energy. Sometimes you may be using a little bit more energy than your system can produce, but overall, you net out at zero through the course of the year. Dan Seguin  10:48 Okay, Kevin, I'm wondering if you could dispel any myths around the cost associated to building a standard home compared to a net zero home. Is it significantly more to be net zero? Kevin Lee  11:02 I think probably the biggest myth would be if somebody said it doesn't cost anything because it definitely you know, we're talking about you know, different technologies you're talking about things like moving from standard double pane windows to triple pane windows, you're talking about being more insulation walls, sometimes building you know, fatter walls and using you know, more lumber or whatever your material is to build more, so there's definitely an additional cost. Some of that clause is defrayed by your energy savings, which is great over time. And so it really varies it depends on your climate, it depends on the size of your home, it depends on the design of your home and those design features. You know, some people like to have lots of windows probably we all love having lots of windows are actually one of the more expensive things though, and they also are tend to be a bit of a heat loss. If you have lots of windows, you might have to spend money in other places. So is it more expensive? Yeah, absolutely it is. It's part of the reason why we say before we get this into regulation, we want to make sure we continue with a research and innovation and costing to bring those prices down. And then when it comes to how much more is it going to be, it also depends on what's the baseline construction standard of your builder. Some builders build the code, which is adding their energy efficiency measures in the building code, and that's still a very good home. Others build the levels like the Energy Star program, which is a little bit higher. So your jump from ENERGY STAR to net zero or net zero ready is a little bit less. So that's not a very direct answer, because it really varies and you can't say it's 5% 10%, etc. It really depends. But it's definitely a great investment. And for people who are looking to stay in their home a long time looking are conscious about climate change and the environment, want a more comfortable home because the nice thing about a triple glazed window just as an example as you sit beside there's practically no condensation. You're right comfortable sitting there. And it's like in the winter. So a lot of good reasons to choose to invest your money that way. And it really comes down to working with your builders to figure out, you know what those costs are going to be. Dan Seguin  11:58 Is there a net zero movement in Canada? Is it in the response to climate change science now showing that in order to have a real impact on carbon emissions, reducing isn't enough, we essentially have to neutralize our environmental footprint. Kevin Lee  13:29 I think that the energy efficiency movement has been going on in Canada for a long time. And you know, we developed the R-2000 program back in the 1980s, in response to the oil crisis prior to that, and then as climate change and environmental concerns have grown and grown, there's been a constant movement of improved energy efficiency, and energy performance of houses and net zero is really that ultimate goal. And as concerns about climate change, continue to escalate, obviously, every sector of the economy needs to do its part to get there. And homes are a big part of that. I will say that, you know, we can definitely get to net zero from every house in Canada built that way, at some point. As I said, it's really about at what point are we able to do that where it's not making it too expensive for homeowners. And the other really critical thing when you're talking about climate change and GHG emissions from housing, it's the very much the existing housing stock that's really critical. The new houses are very efficient, we can make them more efficient, the returns are diminishing a little bit though, and the more energy efficient, you make it the less you get in terms of savings over time. But the existing housing stock and especially the older housing stock is so critically important and that's why we've added renovation to our program and we always recommend to governments things like there should be a home renovation tax credit for energy efficiency, so that people in their existing homes can improve them and we can help defray the costs that, Dan Seguin  15:04 Kevin, we've covered renovations and new builds. What about apartments and condos? Are they a challenge or an opportunity? Kevin Lee  15:14 Well, you know, as with every challenge, of course, there is an opportunity. So a little bit of both, for sure. We can, again, you know, the technology is there, it's a little trickier, with big buildings because you tend to have more units in them and not as much surface areas. Actually, for renewables, you know, you need a certain amount of surface area on the roof for photovoltaics and the solar systems that would go on them. They also tend to have a lot of glazing, windows, people like to have, you know, their exposed walls to be all glass if they could have it in many cases, and that glazing is often the weak spot in in energy efficiency. It looks great, but it tends to be not as efficient as a nice thick wall with lots of installation, but the technology exists, it really comes down to the cost and also potential and those types of systems, you might have to have your renewables off site, or you might be looking at your company draw renewable energy from another place rather than trying to be generating it all with the building itself. And frankly, we also think that that's a big part of, as, you know, we look down the road to the future for net zero homes, you know, should every house be generating its own? Or will it make more sense and will it be more effective for there to be more community systems that generate the renewables and you don't have to have it on your individual unit, I'm going to do a home it could be nearby. So the power generation or renewable power generation is also going to be a big part we think of the future as we move towards sort of net zero economy at large. Dan Seguin  16:53 You’ve alluded to this earlier. There's a variety of home energy performance standards to make homes more energy efficient, are you able to expand on the Canadian Home Builders Association net zero home labeling program? How are those standards baselined? Kevin Lee  17:12 Well, when we set out to develop our program, we wanted to go with sort of tried tested and true rating system. And so, as I mentioned, we base our program on the government of Canada's energuide rating system. That system has labeled over a million homes in Canada. It's backed by the Government of Canada, there are energy advisors trained and certified by the Government of Canada. So that we feel like that is the system to use. The Energy Star program uses that as well. The R-2000 program uses it as well. So the energuide rating system is sort of the point system that grades how much energy you use, and then programs like energy star and our net zero label are points on that scale, if you will, that you're trying To achieve to show a certain level of energy efficiency. And this is the kind of thing that was also used through the equal energy retrofit homes program, a grant program run by the government that through that program, over 600,000 homes are renovated and each one of those dots and energuide label as well as the nice thing about the existing home side of things. And that renovation path is the energuide. Label also provides the homeowner full report on where they can go with their house to make it energy efficient. So you kind of get this pathway, which we think is really important because you can't always afford to do everything on a renovation at the same time. But the energuide system allows you to plan over a few years to do maybe not maybe you can do your windows this year, you're doing insulation in the basement and sealing the next you're going to replace your furnace and three years, whatever the case may be, but you can sort of see that pathway laid out so we really feel like the inner guide rating system is super important. We also think that it should be the rating system for every home in Canada and every program, I often use the analogy, boy, if we have all different rating systems for nutrition labels, it would be very difficult to imagine if you if you went to buy mushrooms off the shelf at the grocery store and you pick up two cans, and it's two different energy labels and you can't compare you wouldn't know which one to buy. And so we're big proponents of saying let's use the energuide rating system, it's the Government of Canada. Let's get that on for all programs, so that everybody can compare and we can what we need to improve in Canada is energy literacy for consumers. It's hard sometimes - it's an invisible thing, energy efficiency. So good labeling and information would help everybody make the decisions. Dan Seguin  19:39 Okay, time to dust off your crystal ball. What are some of the emerging technologies, innovations that hold much promise for the future of an energy efficient and a net zero home? What's exciting you right now in the industry? Kevin Lee  20:00 Well, I think you know, what's exciting is that we have within our membership, leaders in the industry all across the country that are working together to find the solutions. And the interesting thing about a home is its builders putting together all of these different technologies and making choices and using energy advisors to help them and make those choices. So I think what's exciting is that everybody's working together. And we're also working together to innovate, and also identify to manufacturers, what are the next things we need, especially to make the energy efficiency componentry even less expensive, so it can be more readily available to everyone. And so whether you're looking at there's some very one of the most important things in energy efficiency is air tightness and air sealing to avoid air leakage. And there's some great new technologies coming in to help make that easier because it's one of the most important things and also one of the most complicated things. Think about every  penetration if you own the house, whether it's your, your cable guy or your, you know venting for gas appliances, or there's always lots of things popping in and out of what we call the building envelope, as well as it's hard at floor-wall intersections and wall to ceiling intersections. Anyway, there's some very interesting technology coming out for air sealing. Another thing that's very interesting is net zero energy homes. Sometimes joke, you can eat them with a candle. So you need very little energy. And interestingly, our heating systems and even our cooling systems are built for bigger loads are built for bigger houses or even a house with things that uses more energy. So optimizing our mechanical systems for really small loads becomes very important, as does then the distribution of that air around the home to make sure that the temperatures are always balanced. And then there's also the opportunity to integrate ventilation smartly into those sorts of combination systems. Things that we still need to do you know, and would be great to find solutions for in research and development. You know, if we want to pack more insulation in the walls, we really need to have more effective R-values, those are called like, basically we've sort of hit a limit right now on how much how much insulation we can put in a wall, and then you have to build a fatter wall. But building a better fatter wall becomes more expensive, it'd be really great if let's say within the standard two by six wall, you can put insulation in still what ends up being five and a half inches, but it had what we call greater, much higher R-values. So you'd have to build a thicker wall, you just put better insulation inside. So those are some of the directions that we're headed, I'm looking for a very good technology to build the stuff right now, but we're constantly innovating and we know we need more research and development to work together with and the government's always been a big supporter of that and housing because our industry is made a lot of small organizations, we don't have the Fords and the Mercedes and none of the world that have been r&d shops themselves. So collaborating with government to find these solutions that are more affordable is going to be really important as we move to do more and more of these over time. Dan Seguin  23:14 And let's take this from R&D to behaviors, what kinds of lifestyle changes are required within net zero home? Kevin Lee  23:23 Well, I think the great thing about energy efficient homes is they tend to not require any lifestyle change. Energy Efficiency is about being more efficient using technology and construction techniques so that you can live in your home and enjoy it. I always draw the distinction between energy efficiency and energy conservation. Energy conservation is taking a shorter shower, turn down the thermostat, and wear a sweater that's conserving energy. Energy Efficiency is about using technology to make sure that you can still do the things that you like to do, but the houses energy efficient in the first place. Now, lots of people who buy a net zero home are very energy conscious and environmentally conscious as well. So they'll probably elect to do lots of other things. They're probably very avid recyclers and composters and maybe they will turn down the thermostat just because they want to save even more energy. But the nice thing about energy efficiency and net zero homes is sometimes you can't even tell that it's an energy efficient home other than maybe, wow, this is a lot more comfortable than the other house. There's no draft. I can sit beside my windows and I feel really great. There are a lot of benefits and lifestyle benefits, but you typically don't require lifestyle changes. Dan Seguin  24:41 Despite demand for greener homes. The majority of homes built in Canada continue to be built to a minimum standard. Why is there a disconnect between housing desires and what is actually constructed? Will we see a time where building codes could force all new housing to meet the net zero standard. What does the future look like? Kevin Lee  25:07 Well, I think we need to be a little bit careful when we say there's a disconnect between code and what people want, because you also have to add in what people are willing to pay for. So there are a lot - So for example, we already have in our net zero program, and the Energy Star program has existed for a long time, known as quite successful. But as we've talked about all through this, it's a little bit more expensive to build to these standards. And so people have a choice and they often choose and I've spent my whole career working in energy efficiency, and sometimes it's been frustrating because homeowners rightly have the choice. What do they want? Do they want to have a hot tub? Do they want granite countertops? Do they want more space? Do they want to pay more to live closer to town or, or do they want to live a little further away from town where it might be cheaper, and then on top of that, you've got to save If you want a more energy efficient house, it'll cost more. And you're sort of doing these trade-offs  within your budget is why we're so keen on making sure that energy efficiency standards are also married to technology that makes it not more expensive, so that people don't have to make that choice, and in terms of today's minimum requirements through the building code, they're actually very good. And they continue to improve and they're much higher than they were years ago. So when will the code end up being net zero? Well, we would suggest that that should be at a time when you're not causing affordability challenges for Canadians especially for first time homebuyers. That of course you have to build the code, social housing, and even social housing,  ask a social housing provider why they're not building to ENERGY STAR net zero standards. And the reason is because it's very expensive for them, and they're more important for them. It's just to put roofs over people's houses and so it's that that trade as it's happening right now, and it's why we're really pushing for advancements in technology so that it's not more expensive. So we can, when the regulation comes, we're not causing affordability challenges so we can get there. It's just a question of when. Dan Seguin  27:15 So until net zero homes become the standard, what are some simple things that people can do to improve on to make their existing home more energy efficient? Kevin Lee  27:26 Well, the first thing I would say is, you know, think of it holistically. And there are various programs that will supplement the cost of having an energy advisor come by, but really that the best thing is to have an energuide rating system evaluation of your home, and that'll give you the big picture. Sometimes people think for example, that, uh, you know, I just, I should replace my windows and usually you're replacing windows because the seals shot at that point and they're starting to get milky and there's some condensation or whatever, and it's time or maybe wood windows and there's been condensation And the paint is chipping, you know, I want to I need to get the window. Turns out that if you ask an energy advisor to come in and do an energy analysis, he or she'll probably tell you that you can do that and you'll get good enjoyment out of that. But for a fraction of the cost, you can actually just go and blow a bunch of cellulose insulation in your attic and you'll save twice as much energy and so you know, looking at the insulation is a big thing but I would start with an energy assessment to have somebody come in and tell you all the things you can do but through the you know, air sealing is really important. Insulation in the attic is tends to be cheap. Go up through the attic hatch, blow insulation, you're good. Obviously insulating your basement  is a good one to do. It's usually accessible if you have an unfinished basement and does have the benefit of all that improved comfort. Obviously if you have old mechanical systems and old furnace and old water heater, replacing those tends to be a really good move as well. So there's lots we can do lots we need to do over time to help us. We're hoping through the economic recovery that hopefully we're going to get into very well over the next little while that the government steps forward and helps a little bit with what we're recommending would be a tax credit that really incentivizes people to do this. And the other thing I have to say is, when you go to do this stuff, hire a reputable contractor. It’s not worth getting the cash guy to do a side job ladder off the back of the truck, save a few bucks, there are so many risks. So we have a whole get it in writing program that we promote. If you go on our CHP website, it just talks about the pitfalls of not getting a contract, not getting receipts, not getting warranty, all the things that we should all do with your house is probably the biggest investment you'll ever make in your in your lifetime. Let's make sure we take care of that and protect ourselves. So just hire a reputable contractor. And if you're looking for that list, you can go on our website at chba.ca and we list our members all across the country. Dan Seguin  29:57 So Kevin, I really think this is worth repeating where can folks learn more about net zero homes and find a list of builders in their region? Kevin Lee  30:06 Yeah, absolutely well, so we are the Canadian Home Builders Association, and our acronym is CHBA. So if you go to CHBA.ca, or frankly, if you just Google net zero in Canada will pop up on your Google Search pretty much at the top. And on our website, there's all the information there's information about buying a new home, there's information about renovating, renovating the home and making smart choices. And there's information about our net zero program and a full list of all of the builders that we recognize through our program across Canada. So you can find a builder in your region that would be more than happy to work with you and more and more so renovators as well I could help you get on your pathway to getting to net zero. Dan Seguin  30:51 How about we close off with some rapid fire questions? What is the one thing you can't live without? Kevin Lee  30:59 I think it's music, I love music. I'm a bit of a musician. So let's go with that. Dan Seguin  31:03 What is something that challenges you? Kevin Lee  31:06 To try to change the world in positive ways, and it's fun to work on that every day. It's a never ending challenge for all of us. But trying to make good, solid contributions. We have a better world and a better Canada is a big challenge and something I love doing. Dan Seguin  31:22 If you could have one superpower, what would it be? Kevin Lee  31:26 It would be too slow time. I don't have enough time to get everything done. So I would be able to just freeze time, get a bunch of things done, and then turn time moving forward. Again, that would be that would be great. Even for doing hobbies. I don't have enough time to read. I'd love to stop time and read a couple of chapters every once in a while. Dan Seguin  31:47 If you could turn back time and talk to your 18 year old self, what would you tell them? Kevin Lee  31:52 Well, I would tell them the same thing that I'm telling my kids - which is, you know, do the best at everything that you do this work put in the hard work. It will always pay off even if you think it won't. If you're working on something that you don't enjoy, get it done, do a good job on it. And you'll be surprised down the road when, even if it's 'Wow, I hated doing that. I never want to do that again'. Well, you learned it, you did a good job. Yeah, work hard and put in the effort and have fun while you're doing it. Find the fun and everything. Dan Seguin  32:24 What do you currently find most interesting in your sector? Kevin Lee  32:28 The most interesting thing in our sector right now, I think is the challenges that we're facing with affordability and trying to make sure young Canadians and new Canadians can afford their homes. We have a lot of things that are driving up the prices of new homes and, and mortgages and mortgage rules have been tightening, making it even more challenging. So finding that right solution that will really help people become homeowners and get into it. While we also are continuing to try and improve all homes. We've spent this whole time talking about energy efficiency, but we want to make sure it doesn't cost more so people can afford owns that. That whole affordability challenge, which our members are working on all the time, I think is the most interesting and the most challenging, but a huge opportunity because we know, almost every Canadian either owns their home, but two thirds of Canadians own their home and most renters wish they could and hope they will one day you know, so helping to achieve Canadians dreams, I think is a huge opportunity and a huge challenge that we're all working on. Dan Seguin  33:28 Well, Kevin, we've reached the end of another episode of The ThinkEnergy podcast. Last question for you. How can our listeners learn more about your association? How can they connect? Kevin Lee  33:43 Yeah, definitely check out our website at chba.ca. All the information is there. We are also structured as an association with provincial and local associations as part of our organization. So we have local associations all across Canada. And pretty much every urban center and so that's another place that you can connect very locally with the members of our organization that can help you with your housing dreams. Dan Seguin  34:12 Again, Kevin, thank you very much for joining me today. I hope you had a lot of fun. Cheers. Thank you for joining us today. I truly hope you enjoyed this episode of The ThinkEnergy podcast. For past episodes, make sure you visit our website hydroottawa.com/podcasts. Lastly, if you found value in this podcast, be sure to subscribe. Cheers, everyone.

When we talk about the electrification of transportation, we tend to think about electric vehicles or light rail transit. But there’s another sub-genre of electric transportation that is rapidly growing in popularity: e-bikes. In this episode, Seth Weintraub, an award-winning tech journalist and blogger, helps us tackle some of the myths surrounding e-bikes and helps us understand why they’re becoming one of the greenest transportation options when it comes to urban traffic and environmental impact. Related Content & Links: Websites: https://www.electrek.co Linkedin: Seth Weintraub  - https://www.linkedin.com/in/sethweintraub/ Twitter: Seth Weintraub - @llsethj Great ebike reviews on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/electrekco  Transcript Dan Seguin  00:02 Hey everyone, welcome back. This is the ThinkEnergy podcast. When we talk about electrification of transportation, we tend to think about electric vehicles, buses, or light rail transit. But there's another subset of electric trains Transportation that is rapidly growing in popularity. With improvements to battery storage, we may just be entering a new golden age of transportation and mobility, driven by a range of factors from climate change technology, economics, in general consumer preference, the evolution of electric transportation is changing the landscape faster than we've seen in our history. Certainly the awareness of our own responsibility to reduce our own overall impact on the environment is a significant factor. The accounting firm Deloitte says that 300 million electric bikes will be out worldwide by 2023, which is 50% more than today, urban dwellers in particular are seeking convenient, eco healthy and affordable ways to move around congested cities. A criticism has been that e-bikes don't contribute to exercise since the motor does most of the work for you. But a new university of Boulder Colorado study shows that using an electrically powered bicycle on a regular basis can actually provide riders with an effective workout while improving some aspects of cardiovascular health, especially for riders who were previously inactive. The researchers noticed improvement in the rider’s cardiovascular health, including increased aerobic capacity and improved blood sugar control. E-bikes and scooters are affordable now. They are efficient to operate, reduce congestion and ease commute times. They do increase physical activity and simply put - a lot of fun. Yes, e-bikes have a higher emission than a regular bicycle but they far outperform cars, including electric ones, similar to EV's e-bikes can help communities achieve their GHG emission reduction targets. What's interesting is that half of all e-bikes driving trips are shorter than 16 kilometers, with some averaging single trips of just nine kilometers. That's a no brainer distance to cover by e-bikes. Studies show that e-bike owners are replacing 46% of their car commutes, and 30% of their driving errands with a bike rides. Of course, like other electric forms of transportation. This takes support, buy in, and infrastructure investments from municipalities. With supportive cycling infrastructure in place e-bikes have the potential to substitute or completely replace almost all trips taken by a gasoline powered car -which could address congestion and pollution issues and mitigate parking challenges within urban areas, especially for downtown dwellers. So here's today's big question: Are two wheels better than four? In addition to tackling some of the myths surrounding e-bikes are the greenest transportation option when it comes to urban traffic, and environmental impact. Joining me today is a very special guest, Seth Weintraub, an award winning journalist and blogger. In 2003, Seth bought one of Tesla's first model S EVs off the assembly line. This began his love affair with electric vehicles and green energy, which he turned into electrek.co. Seth, I only scratched the surface of your bio in my introduction. Can you tell us a bit more about you, your work, and why electric transportation technology and the environment mean so much to you? Seth Weintraub  05:14 Alright, so my background is in engineering, I went to school for engineering got my post grad engineering. But I started about 10 years after I began my career in writing about technology. And that started with Apple and started 9to5Mac, about 12 years ago. And then that expanded to Google covering Google and covering, you know, the wider technology range. My interest in clean energy kind of began, when I got a Prius, but really kind of everything came together when I bought my first fully electric car, which was a 2013 Tesla. Model S, you know, I got it at the time, I started reading around about, you know, this product, which I thought was pretty incredible. And nobody was really talking intelligently about it, in my opinion, obviously. So I was like, Hey, I know how to do a blog, I know how to, you know, write about technology. I'm going to start up electrek. So that, you know, I didn't want to just say like, start up another 9to5 Tesla kind of site. I wanted to kind of hit the wider spectrum. At the time, I was super interested in solar, we were putting solar on your house, so we get the full, you know, the driving and electric car powered by the sun. At the time, Tesla wasn't a solar provider, they had Solar City which is, you know, kind of a preferred vendor at the time because you own both companies. But eventually they Tesla integrated Solar City into the company. And there are a lot of other solar platforms out there. So it's just a super interesting thing. And it's kind of scary if we don't kind of figure out the  getting fossil fuels out of our energy matrix. And so it's not just solar and electric cars, we like to talk about electric bikes in a big way. We talked about boats and trains, and you know, every other form of transportation and energy usage. And super interesting because it's changing so much right now. It's such a big part of, you know, the transformation that's going on around the globe. And obviously, it's super important. Dan Seguin  07:42 Now, I'd like to talk about electric bikes, which are gaining in popularity across the world. I'd be interested to hear about the technology behind e-bikes and break down any myth or misunderstanding about what they are and what they are not. Seth Weintraub  08:00 That's great - electric bikes, in my opinion are one of the big technology transformations happening right now. So you know as a background love to bikes used to be lead acid batteries and kind of the change in cars from lead acid and nickel cadmium batteries to lithium batteries kind of worked its way down to electric bikes. So, you know, 10 years ago, any electric bike you would find would probably be a lead acid battery so big and heavy and kind of not able to use the full potential of the battery. And that's gone down to these like bricks that are, you know, pretty small and sometimes even fit into the frame of the bike. So, um, but, you know, it just there's so much to talk about electric bikes. You know, they started kind of in earnest about five or six years ago becoming something that you know, everybody can jump on to you know, why are they great? So for me, you know, I, I live in an extremely hilly area, but even if I didn't, the extra speed for me makes my commute more like a car commute. So I can go to my coffee shop or you know to do run my errands on regular roads that cars occupy and I travel around 25 miles per hour. So even on big hills, a car doesn't overtake me very quickly, if at all. So, for me, it's a safety issue like I travel more like a car, cars aren't trying to pass me they're not stressed out. They can't overtake me very quickly. But it also opens up biking to a much broader swath of the population. So you know, if you have a five or 10 mile commute to work on a regular bike, you have to be quite fit and you're probably going to expect to arrive at your destination pretty sweaty in a regular bike. But with a an electric bike, you can kind of control how much assist you have, you know, some electric bikes have throttles and there's a whole litany of, you know, what's legal, where. But a throttle is it almost turns it into like a moped, where you don't even have to pedal if you don't want to. And obviously, the breeze in the air keeps you cool. Like, you know, it's 95 degrees. What is that? Like? 30 something Celsius out today, and everybody's like, I can't believe you're riding your bike. I'm like, when you're going 25 miles per hour, like it's pretty cool. Like there's a lot of wind hitting you and it's, it's really not that bad of a commute. So there are just so many components to it. And you know, I'm probably going off on all different directions, but it just enables a much broader swath of the population can go much further, much faster, much safer. Dan Seguin  10:57 Okay, Seth, who is the main consumer of e-bikes. Is it the adventurer or the urban city resident looking for a quick commute? Are there different classes of e-bikes and levels of motor systems? Can you maybe help me better understand the categories and the consumers? Seth Weintraub  11:18 Sure. So there are a lot of different consumers of E bikes. You have younger folks who just want to go really fast. You have older folks who may be their, you know, their legs and hips aren't what they were at one point and the bike makes it easier to go, city people there's, there's people who like high performance. There's the bikes that are pretty much motorcycles with pedals, and they can go 30-40 miles per hour. So I don't want to there's not just one group of e-bike owners there's they kind of cross the swath of the population. So, you know, you alluded to urban city residents man, like, you know, I live in the suburbs, but every time I go to New York City, I love having an E bike, I can get around much faster than anybody. I mean, I can beat an ambulance across town quite easily. So, for the urban people, like, you're just flying by traffic, there's no, you know, obviously, you don't want to blow any traffic lights and you want to obey everything. But like, for the most part, you're going to be the fastest vehicle on the road. And but for suburbanites like me, like, you know, going to the store, for instance, one thing people don't think about is like, you probably have to park pretty far away and you have to, you know, walk out to your car and do all this other stuff. And by the time you eliminate it, because when you write an E-bike, you pull it out of your garage and drive right up to the store. By the time you do all those things that you have to deal with, you know, find a parking spot, and drive around, whatever. By the time you do all that you're pretty much getting to your destination at this same amount of time with any bike that then when you are with a car, so you know it for me like, when I go somewhere in a car, I kind of just space out and forget about it. But when you're on a bike, it's like a ton of fun you're, you know, hitting the turns  and flying and sees how fast you can pedal. So it's just better in just about every other way. Obviously. When there's a lot of snow when it's raining, that presents some issues, but it's just, you know, as a human being, I think the experience is so much better. You're way more in touch with your environment, you're way more in touch with the people around you. It's just, it's just better in every single way. So there are three official categories of e-bikes in the US and then there's a kind of a fourth category that's unofficial. A category one is a pedal assist up to 20 miles per hour, category two is pedal assist up to 20 miles per hour with a throttle, category three is pedal assist up to 28 miles per hour. And then there's kind of an unofficial category for which is the throttle for 28 miles per hour. And then, you know, in the EU they have a kind of a different kind of motorcycle-ish electric motorcycles category up to around 35 miles per hour. Dan Seguin  14:23 Thanks, Seth. What is the biggest obstacle and/or opportunity for the mass adoption of E-bikes? Does it take him in this capacity to build an E bike movement? Or where does it begin? Do e-bikes offer a transit solution that can be seamlessly integrated into sustainable city features? Seth Weintraub  14:44 I'm gonna say like, the roads, like safety, is kind of like the number one thing I think keeps people off of bikes in general. But you know, e-bikes are certainly a part of that. That when bike-specific lanes get put into cities, biking goes way up, safety goes way up. There are even bike lanes. Like if you're on a street with a bike lane. There are still quite a few accidents that happen there. It's better than no bike lane at all. But, having a dedicated, walled-off avenue for bikes is kind of the way to go. And that's one way of jump-starting bikes. My personal belief is biking is going to start with people like getting the word out, getting people educated, getting people on bikes, like, you know,  I'm kind of an evangelist, so to speak. So, you know, I drive my bike to the coffee shop every day, which is about three or four miles or five kilometers. So they, you know, people see the bike and they want to ask questions, I'm like, Hey, get on, go ride around. See what you think and I probably sold, I don't know, 10 or 15 bikes, and just by putting somebody's butt on the seat. So I think you know, if a city is looking for a way to get more people on bikes, they should probably just say, you know, have events like, hey, come grab the bike, or, hey, we're going to do e-bikes, you can rent a bike for give it a try free for day, that kind of thing. You know, obviously Uber's jump and line bike and all those are, are good ways for cities to kind of get into E-biking, although I would say those bikes aren't a great experience. They're certainly better than the equivalent non electric versions. Dan Seguin  16:44 Now. e-bikes give us another device to charge. Are batteries getting better. How long can they last before recharging? Seth Weintraub  16:54 Great question. So e-bikes are certainly getting better as batteries get better. technology gets better. One thing I would like to see is e-bikes to adopt USBC. So that's kind of the standard that your MacBook and your PC or laptops are using - goes up to 100 watts would be nice if not only could they charge via USBC, but they could, you know, maybe, you know, in the wintertime when you're not using your bike, you can use the battery as a backup for your home. So if your power goes out, you can use your laptop or power your phone, you know, it adds more utility to the battery on your bike. So that's one thing I think that could make batteries better beyond the more charge. As far as how long do they last before charging, that's, you know, there's big batteries and small batteries and powerful batteries and non-powerful batteries. A typical battery for any bike on a typical e-bike would probably take you around 10 or 20 miles with you know, some pedaling involved. There are  bikes that go hundred miles and there are bikes that probably, you know, you have trouble making it five miles. So you're going to want to check that out probably check out our review maybe on a lab check to see you know what real world range bikes get but you know the least expensive bikes out there, you know, a bike that costs like $700 on Amazon will take you 10 or 20 miles. Dan Seguin  18:24 Here are two things that I usually avoid talking about on the show: finances and weight. But I have to know, what is the cost range of any bike and how heavy are they? Now, having had to get one on a bike rack to a car, I can attest, they're fairly heavy... Seth Weintraub  18:43 Yeah. So they're heavier. I think a typical one will weigh around 50 pounds. And you know that's off, probably about double what a typical non electric bike weighs. The good news there is you can kind of just pull off the battery in a lot of cases. So like, if you're putting it on the rack, you can pull off the battery, which is, you know, it'll bring it down to 35 pounds, you still have a heavy motor and some more heavy components that are going to make it a little heavier. But you can put the battery in your car while you're taking it out. So, the cost range is another really tricky one. I mean, you can get very inexpensive ones down, you know four or $500 but those are the smaller tired ones maybe the foldables, very low power very small batteries. You know, there's like four major North American, maybe five brands, just off the top of my head - There's like Saunders evelo Luna juice, and probably the biggest one is Rad. Yeah, so they those are typically cost, like I just bought my father-in-law a Rad runner for I think around 1100 dollars US and you know that's kind of a base model bike it's got fat tires and then you know we got ourselves a Juice Scorpion, which is kind of a more like a more petty looking one and that's that goes for around 1500 dollars you know that's going to be your range of like solid bikes you know 1000 to 1500 is good and then if you're looking for like bike store quality bikes, you know track specialized, you're looking at $2-3,000 I'm currently my daily driver right now is a Gazelle T-10, which is a fantastic bike. You know, all the power I need but still is a biking type of experience. And that that I think runs retails around $3-4,000 depending on the configuration, so pretty wide range. Dan Seguin  21:06 Okay, let's move on, with the growing concern around preservation and sustainability for future generations, are electric bikes, one of the most environmentally sound means of motorized transportation in the world today? Seth Weintraub  21:23 Absolutely. And, you know, I didn't allude to it earlier but when you think about how much power you actually need to get, you know, the 5-10 mile commute that you do every day compared to even an electric car - it's a small fraction. So for instance, for my an entire week of going, you know, I do a lot of my work at the coffee shop in town for an entire week, I can go off of one 500 watt hour battery. So, you know, in comparison that would drive my Tesla probably about a mile. So, you know, I'm going, I don't know, 20 times as far as you can go on a car on the same amount of energy. So, you know, if everybody rode a bike instead of, I mean even an electric car and then you know, obviously, gasoline cars are much worse on the environment than that. But I mean, just even compared to an electric car, an electric bike is so much more fuel efficient. You know, obviously 20 people could ride bikes for one person riding a car in terms of energy usage. Dan Seguin  22:38 Thanks to our green space, and dedicated bike lanes our great city, Ottawa, has a thriving cycling community. What cities in the world are leading the e-bike movement through Policy and Planning? Where are the success stories that Canada can learn from? Seth Weintraub  22:58 You know, I think the world leader and in biking at least in the Western world would probably be Amsterdam. They kind of took a look way back in the 50s and 60s at their car culture city and kind of reinvented their city around biking and pedestrian traffic and you know obviously the city is much better for it. You know, each city is different. I've been to some places like even Berlin. It had a great way to get around on bikes, there's like dedicated bike lanes and every area. I lived in Paris for a year. They had a couple years they had something called the belly there where this was way early, maybe 10-15 years ago before you know all the  bikes and Uber jumps and you just rent a bike from Any spot, you know, within a few blocks and you can go to any other spot within a few blocks, their roads weren't as bike friendly, but they had, you know, at least a system to get on the bike and get off the bike really easily. So, you know, that's my experience. You know, unfortunately, the US doesn't have too much to offer there. You know, we're very car-culture type of place. I'm trying to think. I don't remember Toronto being a very bike centric area, although I did enjoy a long bike ride in Vancouver. So maybe that's, that's somewhere else to look. Dan Seguin  24:44 And Seth, what about E-scooters? What are your thoughts? Seth Weintraub  24:48 Well, I would argue so I've used e-scooters, I would argue that bikes are way safer. You're just standing versus sitting. You're actually getting some exercise on bike scooters are with their smaller wheels not as adept at hitting potholes and stuff like that. I mean, I like scooters, they're energy efficient compared to cars, they're not picking up nearly as much space. But for me, personally, my experience on the bike was much better than a scooter. Dan Seguin  25:24 Other than the demand for environmentally friendly products, what are the major factors that have contributed to the widespread adoption of electric bike growth in recent years? Do geography and culture play a part? Seth Weintraub  25:42 Geography definitely plays a part. Certainly, you know, hills make electric bikes more appealing, culture in the sense that you know, if you see somebody riding an e-bike, you become more open to riding with yourself, if your friends and family pick one up and you're going to probably give, give one a try. Other factors that contribute, I think, you know, as I mentioned, for more out there, kind of breeds more, more adoption. And certainly like the technology getting better. The prices of really good batteries are coming down because of all the electric cars and other innovations happening. So it's a combination of things. I'm trying to think of other stuff, you know, hopefully, websites like ours are bringing electric bikes to the forefront, you know, maybe you're a Tesla person and you're like, Hey, you know, I like reading electric for the Tesla coverage, but there's all these really awesome e-bikes we see, maybe pick one of those up too and throw it in my trunk. Dan Seguin  27:05 Now, what's it like to ride an e-bike in traffic? Numerous studies identify the issues of safety as the key barrier to e-bike adoption. The two primary safety issues are one: the actual safety of the e-bike itself, including its higher operating range relative to a regular bicycle, and two: safely writing an e-bike on the road, Seth, how can these concerns be addressed? And what should beginners know? Seth Weintraub  27:36 So I agree with that, I think we talked about it earlier about safety being the probably the biggest barrier to e-bike adoption. If you are going to ride on roads. Obviously speed kills the faster you go - when you have an accident, they're more likely you're going to get hurt. But the flip side of that is that if you're driving, if you're riding your bike and you're behaving more like a car, you'll get treated more like a car. So instead of riding, you know, on the white line on the right side of the road, you ride in the middle of the road, and you're and you're riding the speed limit. So, you know, if you're in that 25 mile per hour zone, or 30-35 mile per hour zone, and you're actually going close to the speed limit, cars aren't going to feel the need to overtake you. So you can kind of become one, you know, one of them on the road, just that you know, kind of like a motorcycle would kind of think of itself as a, you know, a road citizen. So that for me is the big difference. When I ride around town or people don't try to overtake me because I'm, I'm riding the same speed as cars. Obviously, when somebody sees somebody on a bike, though, they're in the car, their first thought is Oh crap, I got to you know, figure out a way to get around this guy, but, you know, if I'm riding in the middle of the road and I'm going the speed limit, there's really no reason to try to get around me. And they just kind of settle in behind me. Hopefully. Dan Seguin  29:10 Okay, Seth, how about we close off this podcast with rapid fire questions? I hope you are ready. Seth Weintraub  29:18 Oh, God. Yeah. Dan Seguin  29:20 What is your favorite word? Seth Weintraub  29:23 Electrification. Dan Seguin  29:24 What is one of the things you can't live without? Seth Weintraub  29:27 I'm going to get sappy and say: family. Dan Seguin  29:29 What is something that challenges you? Seth Weintraub  29:35 Well, you know, my day to day is publishing. So I'm going to probably go with Google's publishing world. Dan Seguin  29:44 If you could have one superpower, what would it be? Seth Weintraub  29:48 Just flying would be fine. Dan Seguin  29:50 If you could turn back time and talk to your 18 year old self, what would you tell them? Seth Weintraub  29:56 Relax, maybe like things are going to come together. Pretty good. I don't know. I kind of feel like there's a lot of anxiety around 18. So one of those, you know, don't, don't get too discouraged. Dan Seguin  30:15 And lastly, what do you currently find most interesting in your sector? Seth Weintraub  30:21 So for us, what's super interesting is that we are, you know, at a crossroads. So it's, what's interesting to us is like, we know where we're going to be in a few years where we know that, you know, Norway is a good example. They're kind of ahead of the curve 60% of the cars they buy, and obviously, a lot of their bikes are electrified. We know we're going to get there but it's always interesting to see how we're going to get there. It's interesting watching people's minds change. I was at a socially distant dinner party last night, and somebody who I had no idea was interested in electric vehicles was like, Yeah, I got to get an electric bike. And I know my next car is going to be electric. And I was like, Oh, this is kind of going mainstream now. So that's kind of like, what's super interesting for me. Dan Seguin  31:21 While Seth, we reached the end of another episode of the ThinkEnergy podcast, last question for you. How can our listeners learn more about you? How can they connect? Seth Weintraub  31:31 So visit Electrek.co We, um, there. We have a podcast every Friday. And I'm @llsethj on Twitter. That's kind of my outlet of choice for non-story items. Dan Seguin  31:52 Again, Seth, thank you so much for joining me today. It was a lot of fun. I hope you enjoyed it. Cheers. Seth Weintraub  32:00 Thank you very much. I really appreciate it. Dan Seguin  32:04 Thank you for joining us today. I truly hope you enjoyed this episode of The ThinkEnergy podcast. For past episodes, make sure you visit our website HydroOttawa.com/podcast. Lastly, if you found value in this podcast, be sure to subscribe. Cheers, everyone.

What happens when you use a network of hot and cold water pipes, bury them underground, and then use them to efficiently heat and cool buildings – or even whole communities? You get something called district energy. In this episode, Jeff Westeinde, President of Zibi Canada and Founding partner of the THEIA Partnership, shares his passion for environmental sustainability, designing communities to support One Planet Living, and leveraging age-old systems like district energy as a means of achieving a zero carbon footprint. Related Content & Links: Hydro Ottawa – https://hydroottawa.com/ Zibi Canada – https://www.zibi.ca Linkedin - Jeff Westeinde: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeff-westeinde-a46b4843/ --------------------------- Transcript Dan Seguin  00:02 Hey, everyone, welcome back. This is the ThinkEnergy podcast. What happens when you use a network of hot and cold water pipes, bury them underground and then use them to efficiently heat and cool buildings - even whole communities, you get something called 'district energy'. And it's not a new concept. A quick search will reveal that its origins can be traced back to the second century BC to the invention of the hypocaust heating systems that powered the hot water bath of the ancient Roman Empire. Famously a hot water distribution system in Chaudes-Aigues, in France, is regarded as the first real district heating system. It used geothermal energy to provide heat for about 30 houses in the 14th century, and the US Naval Academy in Annapolis began steam district heating in 1853. If you're like me, maybe you're wondering why modern civilization did not continue to use this efficient and environmentally sustainable technology more. There are some European countries such as Denmark, where district energy is mandated, but for the most part, it is largely gone the way of ancient Rome and public bathing. The latter is not such a bad thing in my mind, with more and more socially conscious citizens around the globe, district energy is once again seeing a surge in popularity and becoming a preferred method, thanks to its lower and energy efficient operating costs, reduced supply disruptions, and environmentally sound methods of heating and cooling buildings, municipalities and property owners are intrigued by this ancient alternative energy technology. So, here's today's big question: Is the world ready to embrace district energy as a viable means to power our communities? Is the nation's capital ready to have the first one planet zero carbon community district energy system in the country? Well, my guest today is the founding partner of the THEIA partnership. One of Canada's most sustainable real estate development companies, as well as the president of Zibi Canada, which aims to be Canada's most sustainable development project. He's also an active investor and entrepreneur in both environmental, clean tech and real estate sector with active investments in solar energy, site remediation, and the beneficial reuse of waste. Dear listeners, please welcome Jeff Westeinde. Jeff, can we start by you telling us a bit about your background, the Zibi project and what drives your passion to build sustainable communities? Jeff Westeinde  04:02 Well, so I guess my background, I always say I'm an entrepreneur. I'm an engineer by training, but entrepreneur by practice. So I've, I've had one, what I call real job in my career, I worked for a company for a little over a year, it quickly became apparent that I was unemployable. So I had to start my own business. And I've always been in the environmental sector. So I started I started my career as an environmental contractor cleaning up industrial messes and some of the wastes of the past. And as part of that, I would watch our clients the way they were cleaning up properties, and then what they would do to redevelop them. And I was pursuing trying to, you know, clean up the environment, make the planet a better place. And yet, so the practices we were using, were actually making it worse. We're trucking contaminated soils. You know, the time I lived in BC, we're picking up soil, putting it in a dump truck and hauling it across the Rocky Mountains into a landfill in Alberta. And nobody can tell me that's good for the environment. So very good. quickly decided that we shouldn't say very quickly but decided while I continue to move up the food chain, and start to buy contaminated properties and start to develop places and communities. And because we were purchasing contaminated properties, the commitment that we had was, let's do better than we've done before. So let's push the envelope about how can we live in a sustainable way? How can we ensure that what we're building today doesn't cause the problems that we're cleaning up on the very site for developing so that's maybe a bit of a background as to you know, why how I got into this and in my passion around, you know, leaving, like, I don't know if you're ever in the wilderness, but there's a rule, leave the campsite better than you found it. And I think that rule, that should be a planet wide rule, and it's historically as you know, as not being so. Dan Seguin  05:51 Okay, Jeff, you're on the record saying that the way we build communities does not support health, happiness or the environment. What do you mean by that? And how does Zibi differentiate? Jeff Westeinde  06:07 So, I might even be so bold as to say that, I would argue that most of our planning, especially in North America, is actually shortening the lifespan of our own citizens. And that's because we're so car reliant. We're so socially isolated in the way that we build. So think about a typical suburb. In a typical suburb, if you want to get up and, you know, go get a coffee, buy some milk, bring your kids to school, the very first thing you do is go hop in your car and drive. And that that leads to, you know, the stats that can predict the rate of diabetes, the rate of obesity, the rate of all sorts of other chronic diseases by the postal code you live in, was shocking. So, this car centric suburban lifestyle is not good for you. So that's the health side of it. The happiness side of it, I'll just point to one stat. And that's that you can use, there are statistics that say you can determine the level of happiness of somebody by how many of their neighbors they know by first name. Well, when you live in the suburbs, you know, you might know 2, 3, 4 neighbors, or those people whose kids are your age, or those guys you play hockey with, but you don't have the unexpected collisions as you're walking to the coffee shop or as you're bringing your kids to school. So again, that urban sprawl arguably leads to a lot of source of social isolation. And if something happens to an older person, you fall, you break a leg, even as a young person and you're inside your house. Similarly, you're not looking out your window and seeing people and waving at them and those types of things. So how we build our communities, I think is really important for health, happiness and obviously for environmental sustainability. And what we're doing at Zibi is making sure that you will not be car centric, that you do have these collisions with your neighbors. As you're walking around the neighborhood. We actually have social programming that, you know, we have snowshoe nights and that when Cirque du Soleil comes, we have a night that is just for the residents of Zibi that come, you know those kinds of things to make sure you feel like a part of that community. Dan Seguin  08:28  How did you discover the one planet system? What can you tell us about it and your goal to build the first one in Canada? Jeff Westeinde  08:38 Well, so we'll talk about how we discovered it first, and that's good. Myself and my business partners were behind the very first LEED Platinum buildings in Canada. So we built the first LEED Platinum building in BC, Alberta, Ontario, and in the country as a whole and the LEED Platinum building we built in Alberta - I was visiting one day A couple years after we'd built it, and LEED Platinum is literally the Platinum standard, the most sustainable in the lead system. And I watched one of the residents of his LEED Platinum condominium building drive a Hummer SUV into the parking garage, and said, you know, it's great that our building is sustainable, but we really have an impact and how the users are using the building and how they're, how they're living their lives. So we started scouring the planet, literally to say, Well, is there a system that would really impact not only how we build our buildings and how they operate at a point in time, but how do we engage the people, the users that are using those places? So one planet, we get rated on things like health and happiness and social engagement, along with all the other architectural and engineering features of a community. And the way one planet works: very simple. The name says it all we have to live as if we only have one planet. Most people when I say that look at me and sort of go, but we only do have one planet. And we need to remind them that if you live like a typical Canadian, you're using four planets of resources to sustain your unsustainable lifestyle, and Americans using five planets, Europeans using three planets, and all we're doing is stealing from future generations, and the developing world to sustain our unsustainable lifestyles. So one planet really is all about both environmental sustainability, like technical sustainability and social sustainability, with one planet worth of resources, and it's a very holistic program. Very audacious goals, we're going to talk about zero carbon. So as you know, Zibi is in the nation’s capital in Ottawa and Gatineau. You know, we are we are today we're going to be at plus 34 degrees. Six months from now we'll be at minus 34 degrees Celsius and to be zero carbon in this environment. It's the Holy Grail. So achieving one planet is not an easy thing to do very audacious. But that's where we said, No, that's the bar we need to hit, we need to again, leave our campsite better than we came to it. Dan Seguin  11:13 I was fascinated that this method, 'district energy' dates back, like I think is 3000 or 4000 years to the time of the Roman Empire. What are some of the key benefits of the energy system you're implementing in your community? And why has it taken this long for folks to embrace it with it's being around for so long? Jeff Westeinde  11:40 Well, like most technological breakthroughs, it is not the technology itself or even the concept itself that gets in the way, its people. So regulators, you know, if you look at how our grid works, say in Ontario, you cannot run a district electrical system. I can't, I couldn't produce energy and give it to my neighbor. Because we have a regulatory body that says you can't do it. And there are good reasons for that it was around safety and security and all those types of things. But we've ended up with all of these barriers, that that would prohibit the transportation and sale of energy. And, you know, I talked about electricity. But what's very interesting at Zibi - our district energy system is just hot and cold water. And there are no regulations currently in Ontario and Quebec, around moving hot and cold water. So that allowed us to start a district energy system. Answer so yeah. Again, the reason I would say you don't see more of them is the regulatory hurdles to implement the district energy system are enormous. However, the benefits are huge. And I'll use a very, you know, high level example that if you were to have a, you know, a Shopify data center, a good Canadian company, unlike Amazon, as a for instance. That is in constant cooling. So it's rejecting heating all the time. Right? And beside it, you have the Nordic spa, another great company that always needs heating, but needs to therefore be rejecting cooling. When you put those two side by side, and they're swapping energy back and forth. So your load is so much less. That's the concept of District energy is that by sharing and you know, a commercial building has different loads than a residential building has different loads than a retail building. By sharing those loads, they have different peaks, either for peak shades, you'd be you have less capital expenditure and you're more efficient. Why is it taking so long? It drives me crazy, but I really do think it's regulation is the key item why. Dan Seguin  13:52 Aside from regulation, what have been the challenges you encountered bringing this technology to market in Canada? The sight of your one planet community alone, straddling Ontario and Quebec, is really unique. Tell us about the challenges and how your passion has gotten you through. Jeff Westeinde  14:12 Yeah, I'm not sure how long this podcast is, but I could talk for a week about the challenges. Yeah, as you talked about, we do span the provincial border between Ontario and Quebec. You know, we jokingly say, both sides have a different word for everything. Because one speaks French one speaks English. Even the rule of law is different to one side of the other the legal system. So, you know, we need to repeat everything twice when we do this, but what I'll tell you is, I would say that the way that we've overcome what are just an enormous amount of challenges, I won't even get into what they all are, but it was it was crazy. Boy, when we overcome it was we shared our vision. And actually, I would say was our community's vision of saying, this is where our region started. Arguably, this is where, you know, the roots of our country started was on this site. And when we when we purchased the property was a fenced off locked off contaminated former industrial site that nobody had seen unless you worked at domtar. For probably 100 years, people didn't realize there's a waterfall in the middle of the city. What the community talked about in the vision that we had was no, we need to do something truly world class like something that people would come to our region and say Quebecers Ontarians, Canadians, look at the communities and the places that they create. And with that vision of being world class, we were fortunate that that politicians in the region, federal, municipal and provincial, all endorsed out the community endorse it. So when we started to bump up against bureaucracy and regulations, we were able to remind everybody that our commitment or contract to all of our stakeholders was, we're going to do some world class. Now world class, meaning different, and bureaucracies and regulations exist to enforce the same. So we were able to say, listen, you've got to empower, talk to the politicians, you've got to empower the bureaucrats who are paid to make sure that everybody does everything the same, to say, No, we've got to look at this one differently. We're not looking to do anything unsafe or unreasonable. But there's a better way and we've got to find it. And it was really that vision of world class and the endorsement that we got from all of the public stakeholders who said, yeah, we want to be world class. We don't want to just build another suburb of the City of Ottawa or Gatineau. Dan Seguin  16:47 Now through a marketing lens, how did you position this alternative energy system that provides heating and cooling to your communities' new housing projects? What was the value proposition for prospective buyers and investors. Jeff Westeinde  17:03 I think the key one, one of the lessons we've learned about sustainability and building sustainable buildings and building sustainable communities, is, most consumers don't, you know, while it's a nice to have being sustainable, it's not something that they're making a purchasing decision around. That's changing. I think more and more people are starting to look at that, but historically hasn't been important. So the key to sustainability is, we need to, we're going to allow you to be much more environmentally sustainable, socially sustainable, without any impact to your lifestyle. So when it comes to district heating and cooling, we said, listen, we're going to deliver you zero carbon district heating and cooling at the same market cost as a carbon based system, and you won't know. If you know you're going to turn your heat on, it's going to get hot, you're going to turn up your cooling on it's going to get cool, and you're not going to pay any more of the market. So that was that batten marketing. I mean, that's a no brainer to everybody that Okay, hold on, I get the exact same as I would get in a carbon based system but I'm zero carbon or more sustainable. That's a pretty easy sell at that point. Dan Seguin  18:11 Okay, now I'd like to explore design aspects. District energy equipment inside a building occupies about one fifth of the area of conventional systems that boilers and chillers take up. I'm assuming this provides more flexibility in designing your buildings and community. By eliminating traditional HVAC systems, what building design options did this enable you to expand on? Jeff Westeinde  18:44 There's some easy ones like if you think about rooftop patios, as a for instance, you know, if you have a rooftop patio beside a big chiller that's making a bunch of noise is not a great rooftop. So by  being able to eliminate that equipment. You know, our rooftop patios are much nicer. But really as a place maker, as a developer, the key aspect for us was if you know if you take all of that mechanical and electrical distribution space, and you end up with instead real estate that you can use, it's another added benefit to saying that that district energy makes financial sense or can make financial sense. It wasn't easy to unlock that but can make financial sense. So, so yeah, it obviously the less constraints you have on a building, the more flexibility you have and district is one tool for that for sure. Dan Seguin  19:45 Now, wondering if you could zero in on the energy distribution system that harnesses excess heat from the Kruger paper mill on the Ottawa River and the temporary thermal plant that was or is built to serve residents businesses in your community. Jeff Westeinde  20:02 Sure, yeah. So are, you know, like talking about the benefits, or sorry, the rationale behind district that if you have different energy cycles between neighboring buildings, you can share that energy. Our district energy system is actually based on that very same principle that Kruger operates a tissue mill, directly across from Parliament Hill. They, it's a very efficient, very successful mill. But as part of that process, they bring in millions of litres of water a day, heated up to over 40 degrees Celsius. Use it several times in their papermaking process, but then discharge it into the Ottawa River at about 30 degrees Celsius, anywhere from 25 to 30. So what we're doing is saying listen, you're discharging the millions of liters of hot water into the Ottawa River. Why don't we strip that heat so then what we're doing is we're taking it from 25 to 30 degrees down to seven to 10 degrees and discharging out into the Ottawa. River in our heating system or in the heating season. So that's the concept behind it's very rudimentary engineering, it's strictly heat transfer between water. So, so pretty straightforward from that point of view. What the temporary plane that you speak about is our district energy system. That backbone heating system at Kruger is not yet built that's getting built this season. However, we have users in our buildings right now. So, we have temporary plants that are providing that but the infrastructure for the district the pipes in the streets and hot and cold water system is there. So those temporary plants are going to operate for about another year, after which will be on our permanent system. Dan Seguin  21:44 In addition to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and improving energy resilience. Is it fair to say that district energy deliver economies of scale in areas with high population? What are some of the short and long term benefits for the owner and end user alike? And how do these factor into the government carbon reduction targets? Jeff Westeinde  22:12 Well, yeah, so the short term is if you can be more efficient, so if you have dense populations with different energy cycles, so different peaks and whatnot, as we talked about earlier, you need to spend less capital because you're peaking is at a lower level. And you're sharing energy between so that your overall initial energy utilization from the grid or from the gas system is lower because you're sharing more so overall that drives efficiency. And at the end of the day efficiency then drives lower greenhouse gas emissions and ideally, lower and more stable costs because your energy inputs are a lower percentage of the overall district. So say in our case, you if we're harnessing heat from Kruger, there are no escalation in the cost of that heat. It is waste industrial heat that otherwise wouldn't go anywhere. Whereas if we're connected to the Ontario grid, as you know, you know, costs have escalated very significantly. So that energy input if that is our key input, our energy costs are going to be higher. So we're fortunate that again, the combination of we sit in Ontario and in Quebec, so we have two different electrical and two different gas grids. We have waste heat and our cooling is going to come largely from the Ottawa River. So we have low cost inputs with waste heat and Ottawa River cooling. And we have four different grids we can tap into for alternative and for other energy if need be. So that then allows us to control our costs. So again, just an example of how you can drive efficiency and provide more price stability, while at the same time reducing emissions. Dan Seguin  24:00 Okay. Do alternative energy sources like district energy reduce exposure to fluctuating energy prices? How are the rates/cost determined for residents? Are they comparable to current rates? And are they stable? Jeff Westeinde  24:19 Yeah, so, yes, not all district energy systems are the same. Obviously, it depends on what those inputs are. But in the case of the Zibi community utility, our district energy system, but then our key inputs are that waste industrial heat and cooling base from the Ottawa River, both of which obviously have are stable. There's there is no Yeah, well, I shouldn't say we have some commercial transactions that go on without but not like the grid that allows us to decrease our reliance on the grid for other inputs. So to answer the question on rates, yes, our rates are comparable to market. And we've actually indexed them to the price of Quebec hydroelectricity. And for anyone that understands electrical grids, I would suggest that in North America, Quebec is likely the most stable grid in all of North America. I would say that it is a national utility for the province of Quebec. And I would say, you know, all Canadians are very proud of our healthcare and if they ever tried to take it away, there'd be riots in the streets. I would suggest that if anybody tried to raise electrical rates in Quebec, similar to what's happened Ontario, there would be even bigger riots in the streets. So, you know, we are expecting that will allow us to provide really stable pricing over the long term to our, to our customers. Dan Seguin  25:47 Now, how important was it to find a strategic partner like Hydro Ottawa that had more than 100 years of experience and a strong track record to create safe and reliable utility infrastructure, Jeff Westeinde  26:03 The partnership with hydro auto was critical. And again, consumer acceptance of that of the district energy system. You know, if you think about reliability if you're a consumer at Zibi, and you said, Okay, well what happens if my heating or cooling goes off? Who do I call if I see, well, you know, I am Jeff and here's my cell phone, you know, call me up at the cottage and I'll see if I can help you. That's not exactly reassuring. When you say 'Well, you call Hydro Ottawa" and they will is not who I would normally, you know, they, they're, they're, you know, the relative reliability stats of Hydro Ottawa better than me, but it's 99.999 something percent uptime, you know, 24 hour response, etc., etc. So, being able to bring that credibility of a utility operator to our district was absolutely critical for overall consumer acceptance and I would even say regulatory acceptance. You know, when we started talking about listen we're going to be moving hot and cold water in the you know energy in the form of hot and cold water around the around our community all municipal officials provincially "Okay, let you know if they did you have experience with this?" when we say well, Hydro Ottawa is our partner, it is an automatic acceptance of all know, okay, you guys are credible we understand let's carry on. So don't having Hydro Ottawa as a partner has been truly exceptional for us to be able to pioneer this, Dan Seguin  27:29 Jeff, in addition to district energy, what else is he planning to feature in terms of other advanced technology and innovation to achieve zero carbon living for the residents and tenants on site? Jeff Westeinde  27:46 Yeah, again, I know your podcast is not that long so I could talk forever about this, but I'll give you some key examples. So you know, again, trying to decrease reliance on carbon based transportation systems. So you know, the personal vehicle. You know, having car sharing, having excellent access to transit, when you're looking at other things that have a carbon footprint, how we build our buildings, the components that go into our buildings, the materials that go into our buildings, some are very carbon intensive. So again, we're targeting those that aren't carbon intensive. Even things like if you look at logistics, you know, when you buy a head of lettuce at the at the grocery store, the carbon it took to get that lettuce to the grocery store is embedded in that very product. So having urban agriculture, you'll see urban gardens, we've got a couple on site now. So all sorts of areas where anywhere where we can target things that are that use carbon to get delivered to or to, as part of the system that we're in. We're looking at incrementally changing all of those things. And those increments when they add up, turn into some big numbers. So that's really our focus. Dan Seguin  29:06 Jeff, how about we close off with some rapid fire questions? Are you ready to go? What is your favorite word? Jeff Westeinde  29:15 Serendipity. Yeah, I love serendipity. Because good things happen when you're not paying attention. Dan Seguin  29:20 What is one thing you can't live without? Jeff Westeinde  29:24 That's an easy one. My wife. I could be dead without that woman! Dan Seguin  29:30 What is something that challenges you? Jeff Westeinde  29:33 The word "No." I'm not good at taking the word 'No', it's how Zibi exists. Dan Seguin  29:38 If you could have one superpower, what would it be? Jeff Westeinde  29:41 I'd love to be a shapeshifter, be able to get inside different systems, different beings and understand how and why they work. I have endless curiosity. So I think being a shapeshifter would be amazing. Dan Seguin  29:53 If you had to turn back time and talk to your 18 year old self, what would you tell them? Jeff Westeinde  29:59 First, I would say smarten up and stop doing dumb things. But no, I think the one thing I would say is listen, relax. You know, something that has come to ring true with me, the Roman philosopher Seneca said, you know, "luck happens when opportunity meets preparedness". And I've been very fortunate to be lucky. But there's only one thing I can control in there. I can't control luck, I can't control opportunity. All I can do is control preparedness. So get prepared and just relax, pay attention, good things will happen. Dan Seguin  30:31 And lastly, what do you currently find most interesting in your sector? Jeff Westeinde  30:36 I love the fact that public health - so right now, you know, as you know, we're in the middle of a covid pandemic - public health is leading that across our country. But here in Ottawa, it's Vera Etches, I love the fact that our public health officials are starting to be included in our urban planning policies. So in Ottawa, Vera Etches participated in that. So remember I said earlier, you know, the way we plan is shortening the lifespan of our citizens. Public health starting to get involved in that. I'm really hoping that there will be an influence where they'll say, "if we planned communities this way, then here are the health benefits of it. If we do it that way, here's the health benefits." That's not currently happening. So I find that really exciting.  Well, Jeff, we've reached the end of another episode of The ThinkEnergy podcast, last question for you. How can our listeners learn more about you and Zibi? How can they better connect? So, you know, we've been talking mostly about the Zibi project, which is one of the many things I do you know, if you go to Zibi.ca, then you can find more about Zibi and if you look to hello@zibi.ca anybody that wants to connect they're very good at getting people to me. I'm not much of a social media person, I do have a LinkedIn profile. I don't use it very often. But you can find me on LinkedIn and I'm good at responding to messages there as well. Dan Seguin  32:09 Again, thank you so much for joining me today. I hope you have a lot of fun. Jeff Westeinde  32:13 Well, this was fun, Dan, and thank you for your interest in Zibi and one planet. That's fantastic. Dan Seguin  32:20 Thank you for joining us today. I truly hope you enjoyed this episode of The ThinkEnergy podcast. For past episodes, make sure you visit our website HydroOttawa.com/podcast. Lastly, if you found value in this podcast, be sure to subscribe. Cheers, everyone.

Compared to conventional methods of energy generation, like fossil fuels, greenhouse gases emitted from renewables are little-to-none; making them the cleanest, most viable solution to prevent environmental degradation. In this episode, we invite Brandy Giannetta, Senior Director at Canadian Renewable Energy Association, to discuss renewable energy and the realistic strategies for increasing its supply to permanently replace the remaining carbon-intensive energy sources in Canada. Related Content & Links: https://hydroottawa.com/ Websites: Canadian Renewable Energy Association https://renewablesassociation.ca/ Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brandy-giannetta-45872539/ Transcript: Dan Seguin  00:02 Hey, everyone. I'm Dan Seguin from hydro Ottawa. And I'll be hosting the think energy podcast. Are you looking to better understand the fast changing world of energy? Join me every two weeks and get a unique perspective from industry leaders as we deep dive and discuss some of the coolest trends, emerging technologies, and latest innovations that drive the energy sector. So stay tuned as we explore some traditional and some quirky facets of this industry.  Hey, everyone, welcome back. This is the ThinkEnergy podcast. We've all heard the saying 'it's not easy being green'. But when it comes through renewable generation, is that true? With all the scientific evidence out there, being a climate change denier is becoming more and more synonymous with being a flat-earther. It's clear that humans have been polluting our atmosphere with carbon dioxide and other global warming emissions. NASA, the World Health Organization and the United Nations say we have to change the way we live, work and play. As we face our own extinction, what is the answer? Do we have the courage to be green? Are we okay with it not being easy. That brings us to renewable energy. How easy or difficult is it? How does it improve our health, environment and economy? Where is Canada at? And are we on track to becoming a global climate leader? Are we leveraging renewable energy within the electricity system. And do we have enough new renewable capacity to power our energy needs compared to conventional methods of generation like fossil fuels, greenhouse gases emitted from renewables our little to none, making them the cleanest, most viable solution to prevent environmental degradation. Renewable sources of electricity have powered Canada for more than a century. According to Natural Resources Canada, renewable energy sources currently provide about 17% of Canada's total primary energy supply, with wind and solar as the fastest growing in the country. So here's today's big question. What is a realistic strategy to increasing the supply of renewable energy so that we can permanently replace the remaining carbon intensive energy sources in Canada. And what would the global impact be? Joining me today is Brandy Giannetta. From the Canadian Renewable Energy Association, Brandy is a regional director responsible for promoting, communicating and advocating for adoption of the associations policies, with political representatives, members of government, media, and other key stakeholders and decision makers. Brandy, welcome to the show. Maybe start us off by talking about the Canadian Renewable Energy Association. its mandate and why it's important for Canada. Brandy Giannetta  03:46 Sure thing! Well the Canadian Renewable Energy Association: We are a national Industry Association is we we see ourselves as the voice for wind energy, solar energy and energy storage solutions, here in Canada with the goal of powering Canada's energy future. So our association really works to create the conditions for modern energy solutions vis-à-vis stakeholder advocacy, public engagement at several different levels. So we are a multi Technology Industry Association and we are new. We are looking again to provide that unified voice for renewable energy as well as energy storage across Canada. So we're the product of uniting what was the Canadian Wind Energy Association with what was the Canadian solar industry association so CANWEA and CANSIA our well-known names as having had decades of advocacy in Canada on behalf of the wind sector in the solar sector in Canada. And now we're one new expanded Industry Association, so very exciting, which also now includes, of course, energy storage. So that's in recognition of that pivotal role that energy storage is going to play alongside those renewable technologies as we look to transform Canada's energy mix. Dan Seguin  04:59 What is the Canadian Renewable Energy Association's role in transforming Canada's energy mix? Brandy Giannetta  05:08 Right? So Well, our new joint venture as one's association is really going to enable our members as well as the association itself to secure what we think is going to be a larger piece of the fat future energy pie that could normally have been achieved as single technologies or single entities. So our technologies having common interests in common characteristics will with respect to that policy, energy policy, you know, climate policy, different markets and regulatory frameworks throughout Canada, and really advocating within those commonalities to support the deployment of all of the technologies or solutions. So I didn't mention in the front that we have over 300 members within our association that represent that full scope of the sector. So we're really uniquely positioned to do that as an industry association, but I see some really sort of specific aspects of how we will do that. In what our strategy will entail. And I alluded to a little bit around the advocacy side, providing access to credible and timely information, and industry engagement. So that's an internal process, as well as an F front facing sort of public facing engagement role that will play. So as a national Industry Association, as I mentioned, we will be active at the federal level from an advocacy perspective, but will we're also present in multiple jurisdictions across Canada. So we advocate for policies that focus on that transition to a clean economy, but it's powered by renewable energy solutions. So that's really the key there. What are what are one of the things we'll be working toward is to create new opportunities, but also to remove the existing barriers that are stopping us from realizing those, those solutions and ultimately, that will enhance the deployment of our technologies throughout the country, and what we really consider to be safe and sustainable, environmentally friendly manner, but also a big part of that advocacy side and credible information and front facing side of what we do will be to increase public awareness of our technologies as they stand. But also, most importantly, the benefits that they provide that they're already providing to communities throughout Canada. And across the future, the potential to do even more. So federally, we have, you know, number one priority is to make sure that we're well positioned to contribute to economic recovery, particularly in a COVID situation that we're in right now. But also as a unified voice for the renewable side and energy storage, we're going to really try to help navigate Canada to an emissions reduction targets, we're going to create good jobs, we're going to stimulate the economy, you know, we're going to be present in urban centers and rural centers and indigenous communities. So we have so much value to offer. And as a collective effort, we're really going to try to influence those public policies that are really energy focused and economic stimulus focus to be able to do that. And we can do it because they'll probably say this a lot. We're a really scalable set of resources and when you put us all together, we're really well suited to power that transition. Dan Seguin  08:03 How is your association positioned to deliver clean, low cost, reliable, flexible, and scalable solutions for Canada's energy needs? Brandy Giannetta  08:14 Well, I'm glad you said it first, because I think I'll be repeating myself a lot, because that's the key. We're low cost, we're reliable. You know, we offer flexible, scalable solutions. So we have a headquarters in Ottawa, we're nationally, you know, present. But we also have people in the key regions across Canada from east to west and centrally and connect in Toronto. And we definitely look to influence regionally regional policies as well as national policies. And we definitely have a public facing communication side where we're advocating for energy solutions that will leverage the value proposition that renewables and energy storage provide together. So we're going to have what I talked about a little earlier with that internal forum for dialogue for our members that enables us to really collaborate provided opportunities for the stewardship of our technologies but also the growth of the industry across Canada and Canadian economies. So renewable energy and energy storage, as I noted, have a really important and central role to play as we transform our Canadian energy mix. And we see electricity markets adapting to these transformational demands to not only decarbonize, but as a result, electrify new sectors with clean electricity resources. So that reality has really been a huge driver in that tremendous new market opportunity for renewable energy and energy storage together. As we sort of get more comfortable with what that transition looks like and what it entails, our electricity system here in Canada is really going to need increased, actually, I would say significantly increased amounts of renewable energy, energy storage and at the utility scale. So our grids need to be powered by clean supply of renewables backed up by energy storage, and we need to make sure that they remain affordable, reliable, flexible, and scalable, as you noted, so that's going to mean, you know, large utility scale deployment of renewables and energy storage, but also a significant uptake and sort of mobilization of those behind the meter application. So distributed energy resources, for example. And putting that new collaborative framework in place like we've done at our association, is going to fully be able to allow us to fully leverage that opportunity. Dan Seguin  10:23 Let me ask you this. Is the renewable energy industry primed to enter a new phase of growth driven largely by increasing customer demand and cost competitiveness? Are you seeing a culture shift? Brandy Giannetta  10:38 Definitely, yes, there has been and it's, it's, I would say, Now more than ever, that we are realizing that culture shift and we're starting to see things materialize as a result of that shift. So ultimately, the needs and the wants of Canadian consumers have evolved but they're continuing to evolve. So you know, energy technologies: these aren't the only thing. It's markets that are innovating. The costs are coming down, as we all know, to a significantly affordable level. Business models as a result are also changing, not just here in Canada, but globally. So it's a global trend. It's not unique to Canada, we are well poised to follow those global trends and capitalize on the learnings and advancements of technology as well as the market and business structures that have evolved as well. So renewable energy and energy storage as solutions. Focused approaches are really increasingly contributing to those electricity grids and energy systems at a large scale, which in that what that means is that we're enhancing the reliability aspect and offerings, the flexibility of the technologies. And because we're super scalable, as I told you, I'll talk about that a lot, because it's certainly an attractive aspect of the advocacy side. The scalability of our energy production and use in Canada and abroad is really a factor there because we can do it at whatever scale needed for whatever system You know, is being sought. So a consciousness about the environment continues to grow alongside that. So we got energy policy and economic stimulus, but we also have environmental policy and the drivers for decarbonisation, and electrification of the sectors that aren't traditionally powered by electricity, like cars and transportation like but a large scale as well as buildings are really increasing the demand for energy solutions that are non-emitting affordable, scalable, flexible, and all of those great things. And that's something that obviously our industries can provide. So our vision really, ultimately is to ensure that renewable energy being solar and wind and energy storage on top of that are playing that central role as we transform the mix so that we can continue to provide those solutions across the board. Dan Seguin  12:43 Randy, do you believe that renewables like wind and solar can help deliver the Clean Power jobs needed for sustainable economic delivery? Brandy Giannetta  12:55 For sure, I mean, the calls for an economic recovery right now that are grind Clean Energy and Climate Action are increasingly growing and becoming more prevalent across the across the globe. We've got the International Energy Agency, for example, who called this a historic opportunity, you know, despite the fact that we're in a global pandemic, and there are many crises to manage. We're taking our cues from the International Energy Agency as a proper agency seeking, you know, recognition that we have an opportunity upon us that is historic and in its nature, the International Monetary Fund as well has its leadership has come out to say that we must do everything within our power to make it a green recovery. So right here in Canada, we in particular, are signatories to a public letter, which has asked Canadian governments to pursue a resilient recovery to the COVID situation in particular. So we've got hundreds of signatories representing over a you know, I think over 2000 now, Canadian companies that are right here, you know, headquarters here in Canada that have signed that letter seeking campaign. In order to pursue federal and provincial governments to commit to a clean recovery and resilience plan, so the the renewable energy sector as well as energy storage industries, we're making a case for those policies, energy policies, economic stimulus, packaging, recovery policies that are, you know, threefold, we need to make sure that they're economically timely and long lasting, so right time, right place, and that they are sustainable, making sure that they're environmentally sound. So there needs to be that environmental sustainability attached to those policies. And then eminently feasible, they have to be practical, realistic and actually implementable with a proven success here in Canada or elsewhere. So that we can capitalize on that and truly, you know, make that history that the International Energy Agency has referred to. So our federal government stimulus and recovery efforts in particular, I think our focus right now for us because we think that those efforts can create jobs, they can spur clean tech innovation. They will encourage economic diversification across many sectors, not just the energy sector, but also ultimately we're going to cut carbon pollution while doing that and why not because that illness causing you know, air pollution is something that we can tackle at the same time while we grow our economy. And really what we're looking to do is make Canada more resilient country, and we want to do it on the back of our energy sector. So we really believe that's important. And we do believe that those initiatives taken in support of economic recovery also allow us to address all those significant other challenges like climate change. So it's really important that we invest in wind energy and solar energy and in energy storage at appropriate scales and in appropriate locations, so that we can deliver the jobs, the economic benefits, making sure that today we're realizing those benefits, and then building out that longer term infrastructure that's sustainable, it's going to provide a really strong foundation for a lot more investment down the road. And again, jobs economic activities going to all spur as we as we build out those little as of tomorrow, Dan Seguin  16:01 so climate adaptation and resilience stand out as rapidly emerging areas of employment as a result of climate change impacts, what types of careers are in demand? And at what rate are jobs in clean energy sector growing? Brandy Giannetta  16:20 That's a great question because you know, the numbers are there. So we know the stats, and we can say it all those figures. And I'll talk a little bit about that. But the jobs are exciting. And there's no limit to the types of jobs one of the greatest stats that I love. And I check it out every year as the annual numbers come out of the US in particular is the wind turbine technicians and solar technicians that has continuously year over year over the past several years, ranked as one of the fastest growing occupations in the United States. So that's really exciting because that resonates here in Canada as well as we build out our industry. In fact, we did a wind energy supply chain study in Alberta, a few years back and it really detailed the breakdown of the jobs required just for a wind farm in particular And it was varied from the very, you know, technical and professional engineering requirements, geotechnical type requirements siting and negotiation of land agreements, and the regulatory advocacy work as well as environmental side of that. There's also, you know, the broader procurement construction side and you know, transportation logistics, you know, setting up a crane and having that that broader service industry attached to the evolution of the sector. So it's really a significant cross section of very technical and professional quality career type positions, research driven things from environmental sustainability, and then the, you know, the heavy lifting of the transportation and construction side of things. So there's a lot of, we're seeing offshoots of service jobs as well. And one of the large one of the aspects of the solar side, especially behind the meter, and that large uptake of solar installations behind the meter has created a lot of opportunities is very labor intensive. And we're seeing from the solar industry, significant numbers on manufacturing, sales, distribution and wholesale careers. We've got the installation community as well across Canada growing at an exponential rate, operations and maintenance will remain a significant portion of a sophisticated workforce. And then as I said, that offshoot service industry that supplies the services to those things. So as you can see, it's not a shortlist of jobs. It is, is a varied and like I said, extensive list of job opportunities that will continue to evolve and grow. Now, if you want to talk about statistics, the rate that it's growing at, we have already over 300,000 people employed in the clean energy sector in Canada. So that number has continued to grow by close to 5% every year, and it's slated to continue to do so which just to give you some perspective is about a third faster than Canada's economy as a whole and its growth rate, which is just under 4%. So by 2030, the projections that we're relying on today show us that there will be over a half a million Canadians employed and gainful full time lucrative careers in the clean energy sector, across the country. And that's going to be, you know, thanks in part to continued commitment to climate policies, to programs that are supporting robust clean economy type stimulus, and that growth rate will continue to evolve as a result. So it's very good news, Dan Seguin  19:21 Brandy, in a world where distributed energy resources are increasingly valued. I'd love to hear your views on both the wind and solar value proposition as compelling options and how customers can more actively manage their demand. Brandy Giannetta  19:39 Right? Well, I have to go back to the old you know, the the reference to scalability, wind energy, solar energy, even energy storage - extremely scalable. What that means, as I as I noted earlier, is that these technologies, you know, they're well positioned to transform our energy system, but they can provide solutions at a micro level or a macro level. So at the micro level, distributed energy resources can be deployed in a number of ways to empower the customers that are seeking those technologies. And then of course, then scaled according to a very unique set of needs as defined by the customers themselves. And they're affordable. So more and more energy customers of all types, as I think I said this already, or they're seeking, you know, clean, affordable, safe, all of those all of those buzzwords and properties and principled approaches to pursuing these technologies as solutions. And ultimately, they're less and less focused on a single technology to provide it. Is it smart? Does it make sense does it fit all those boxes being checked, you know, whether that's wind, solar or storage at the scale that's required. That's really that's the value of that as a solution of these technologies as a solution option, and they're multifaceted. So I think that really there's definitely clear public desire, obviously for clean and affordable as we've noted many times, but those solutions behind the meter, so smaller scale applications, Like rooftop solar panels, personalized home energy storage systems, things like that are going to continue to evolve and provide those solutions at other larger rate. And the innovation behind those distributed energy resources is really what's, you know, allowing us to be poised to meet the demands of today's customers, but we evolve those offerings for the future needs and wants as well. So that transition again, clean, renewable sources, is very important. And the impact for the consumer and ultimately, our economy and environment are what's really driving the value proposition there. Dan Seguin  21:33 As solar and wind power come closest to meeting three key energy consumer priorities—cost-effectiveness, decarbonization, and reliability—what role will they play with microgrids and self-sufficiency? Brandy Giannetta  21:50 Oh, great question. Again, all those buzzwords but important ones right. They're really principled realities and, you know, criteria that we're aiming towards So the successful and enhanced uptake of micro grids and self-sufficiency will be motivated as long as we continue to meet those principles and those criteria. So remember flexible, scalable, and portable. So we've got a micro level, you know, distributed energy resource, and we can deploy it in a number of ways. So I talked a little bit about in the previous question about, you know, based on what the customer's needs and wants are. So, you know, some really, you know, tangible examples of that are converting remote communities that aren't grid connected, so they have no wires and no transmission access. And they've been running on diesel generators for decades for generations really. And we're going to convert those to sustainable micro grids, we're going to use solar panels, we're going to use industrial size storage, whether that's batteries or otherwise, and maybe even a wind turbine or two, if it makes sense. You do it to scale. And now you've got a remote community that's self-generating, you know, non-emitting, and it's quite independent. And that's, that's a success story in and of itself. Distributed energy resources, can really promote increased energy self-sufficiency. And through other examples that are a little simpler even like deployment of rooftop solar in neighborhoods, you know, we're going to use it to heat your house your water instead of the electrical or gas hot water heater, maybe you're using it to heat your pool. So you're not running you know, another gas line or gas system in your urban areas, but also providing electricity more broadly like bigger installations on hospitals and colleges and universities and schools like that municipal buildings, all of those are all you know, fall into the bucket of distributed energy resources which promote self-sufficiency and ultimately, renewable energy powered things like charging stations for electrical vehicles is enhanced. You know, I would say ultimately, self-sufficiency, proper and enhanced reliability go hand in hand because you can couple that with energy efficiency, electric vehicles, charging as well as discharging and smart grids and even certain demand response measures. So the list goes on and on. You know, we can unpack them but though it's quite, I would say quite lucrative. And again, it all comes back to the fact that scales scalability. Dan Seguin  24:09 Brandy, can you help me understand what the role of storage plays in the deployment and advancement of renewable energy? Brandy Giannetta  24:17 Oh, sure. Well, on a larger scale like utility side, the technologies renewables can be deployed in complimentary ways to supply and support our broader electricity grids. Or they can be used as a co-located or hybrid resource with facilities like wind projects, wind farms and solar projects. Adding energy storage in order to firm that utility scale offering of energy to the grid, so firm power, or capacity, if you will, but by working together, the renewables and energy storage present a broader and more diverse range of not just firm energy offerings, but for customer seeking other things that diversity in tech technology provides scale grid services and other products for lack of a better word to the grid operator. And then ultimately, if you're looking at a smaller scale to the customer, as standalone efforts to enhance the needs that they have identified, sometimes that's offsetting their peak demand use and other aspects and applicability of the energy storage component can be used that way. So, the scale varies large scale utility grid offering to smaller scale behind the meter solutions is a really energy storage in particular, as a technology has a central role to play in that in that transformation to be able to make those solutions tangible and affordable and implementable. Dan Seguin  25:48 Now for the million dollar question, how is Canada faring as a global climate leader? In your opinion, what is the low hanging fruit and what has the potential to have the biggest impact to the industry and maybe the world? Brandy Giannetta  26:06 Well, sure, Canada is in a great position already, because we are starting from a spot of having strong renewable and non-emitting electricity base. So there remains also a massive untapped potential for wind, solar and hydro resources to continue to be developed. And so I would say that we're as one of the best countries or countries best position to eliminate our fossil fuel use any electricity generation in particular. And then the abundance of our resources means that we're then also well positioned to support significant increase in non-emitting or renewable electricity supply to power those other fossil fuel intensive industries, like I mentioned earlier transportation and buildings. So we do need to move away from fossil fuels for those other industries as well. And we can do it on the back of the electricity sector in Canada, as it currently stands, but we can also evolve that significantly because we already have the resources. And I think the number is associated with deep decarbonisation and vision that we need to increase our electricity production by two or three times to reach our sort of net zero GHG emission targets. And we already, like I said, have all of those resources available to us to do that. So it's a matter of the will and, you know, transitioning to that, as a global leader, we can really, I think, step ahead of the crowd and shine. Dan Seguin  27:26 What is exciting you about the renewable energy industry right now? Brandy Giannetta  27:33 Well, we're on the right side of history, we always have been but now more than ever, I think the stars are really aligning, you know, we've got decreasing costs, our customer demand and knowledge is growing at a rate. I don't know that any of us could have predicted a few you know, a decade ago, that emissions free zero marginal cost fuel, it's never going to go away. It’s here to stay. It’s scalable, it's flexible, and it’s decentralized. All of those buzzwords, which we can unpack any single one of them. That's exciting. But really put them all together. And I don't know, how exciting is that? Like, I don't know if I'm if I'm making the assumption, but I think it speaks for itself, like we are in a really good place right now, for all those reasons, and we need to be excited about it. Dan Seguin  28:15 Here's my last question, Brandy. What keeps you up at night? Brandy Giannetta  28:21 Well, you know, I think governments across Canada, you know, they need to take the politics out of the energy sector. And the decision making processes really need to be based on fair and transparent competition. You know, we've all, you know, leveling that playing field for us all and taking the politics out of it, because that decision making process really needs to be aimed at providing the best solution to clearly define problems without the politics and that's not to say there's not a role for governments and energy policy. There certainly is, but sound policy, stable investment signals, those things need to outweigh the politics in order to realize that, you know, progress and innovation it’s so ripe for the picking. And I think our good friend Geddy Lee, a Canadian icon, says it best when he said "progress has no patience, but something's got to give." So those are the things that I stay up at night thinking about. Dan Seguin  29:11 Brandy, we've reached the end of another episode of the thick energy podcast. How can our listeners learn more about you and your association? How can they connect? Brandy Giannetta  29:23 Well, like I said, we are new. So we've got a brand new shiny website up and running. It's renewablesassociation.ca. We're active on Twitter and LinkedIn, mostly, we've got Facebook and maybe a couple of other social channels. But we're going to continue to be evolving those sites over the summer in both English and French, which is very exciting and very important to us as a national Industry Association to be fully bilingual. So I would say that your best efforts reach out vis-à-vis our website. We're a small but mighty team, and so we're listed there and you can contact us centrally through the website is probably your best bet. Dan Seguin  29:57 Again. Thank you so much for joining me today, I hope you had a lot of fun. Brandy Giannetta  30:02 I sure did. Thank you so much for the opportunity. I really appreciate it. Dan Seguin  30:07 Thank you for joining us today. I truly hope you enjoyed this episode of The ThinkEnergy podcast. For past episodes, make sure you visit our website hydroottawa.com/podcast. Lastly, if you found value in this podcast, be sure to subscribe. Cheers, everyone.

If you ever thought about starting your own podcast or wanted to learn more about the process, this episode is for you. With years of experience in the podcasting industry, Rhys Waters and Jonathan Burns – co-founders and producers of Podstarter – have seen it all, including ups, downs, successes & failures. They believe that success can be found by any podcaster through a healthy balance of passion, consistency, and a genuine connectedness with their target audience. Tune in to learn the ingredients of a great podcast. Related Content & Links: https://hydroottawa.com https://www.podstarter.io https://canadianpoliticsisboring.com   LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rhyswaters/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/burnsy/ Transcript: Dan Seguin  0:02  Hey, everyone, I'm Dan Séguin from Hydro Ottawa. This is the ThinkEnergy podcast. Changing times have led to the implementation of numerous new technologies in business. One of the most fascinating is this, what you're doing right now listening To a podcast. First, thank you for listening. I'm grateful that every two weeks you tune into our show. As the world becomes busier and channels more cluttered, podcasting is becoming increasingly popular. According to Forbes, there are 62 million Americans listening to podcasts every week. But why? With more than 850,000 active podcasts available, the variety of topics is limited only by your imagination. podcasts have been around for a decade and a half. But in the last five years, we've witnessed a renaissance thanks to smartphones, podcast apps, and voice activated speakers. They're easier than ever to access. Hydro Ottawa opted to invest in podcasting because they are convenient, very portable and easy to use with tremendous listener retention rates. In addition, they provide a repeat touch point for audiences. podcasts have a unique way of making technology disappear. You simply listen to your device. There's no tapping, swiping or clicking. In this way, podcasting reduces the friction and noise associated with traditional digital advertising, allowing us to speak directly to you and find a connection. Maybe you're listening to this while you're doing the dishes, driving exercising. With podcasts, our hands are free to multitask. A recent study showed while 49% of podcast listening happens in the home 22% happens while driving 11% at work and 8% while exercising. If you ever thought about starting your own podcast or wanted to learn more about the process, this episode is for you. It's relatively easy to begin with little overhead or broadcasting experience. You can actually start recording a podcast with just your iPhone or a pair of headphones or ear buds. So here's today's big question. How can podcasting effectively build relationships and trust and become an efficient way to make positive connections with people simply using the power of voice? To help us better understand the strategies and process behind podcasting? We've invited the cofounders of pod starter on today's show. They share a vision of helping people in companies make great podcasts and guide them on how to tell compelling stories. They've built global audiences and have worked with broadcasters like the BBC, their company He's responsible for more than half a million podcast downloads. Dear listeners, please welcome Jonathan Burns and Rhys Waters. gents. First things first. Tell us about your company podstarter. And what drew you to podcasting?   Rhys Waters  4:22  I personally started in podcasting back in about 2015. Back in the UK, I was working on some radio projects for the BBC. And we kind of got roped into releasing some radio shows, as podcasts and it kind of spiraled from there. My background is in film. So it was kind of a really exciting new creative place to just play with audio and tell stories and, and kind of grow in in that environment. So since then, yeah, I've just been having fun with it, seeing what challenges you can overcome in terms of recording in real world locations and studio spaces and then having those kind of conversations That you can't necessarily have in other realms that podcasting really allows you to, to take advantage of.   Jonathan Burns  5:08  Yeah, for myself, there's a couple of reasons of why podcasting really sort of drew me to it. My background has been creating content anywhere from online training videos to building augmented reality, virtual reality experiences, sort of content that has impact or connects with an audience in a unique way. And having met Rhys a few years back, we started having conversations around podcasting and how accessible It is to be able to communicate and craft stories. And the company pod starter sort of evolved out of that notion of A) it's accessible, but B) a lot of people are doing it, not necessarily doing it well, but there's an opportunity to be an expert at it. And we launched really as a sort of a consulting company, to help people learn how to do it and then then Off you go, but it's morphed and evolved into full podcast production to Creative Services to micro content to everything sort of wrapped around that podcast cycle.   Dan Seguin  6:03  Here's a question for you both didn't Video killed the radio star in the age of TikTok YouTube and social media podcasts feel a bit like a throwback to the days of radio? Why the surge in popularity?   Rhys Waters  6:19  I really like to talk about NPR in the US because they are the biggest podcasting network in in the world. And they started out as a radio station that was really a radio kind of producer that was struggling, you know, and NPR was people. There were lots of articles. If you go back 10 years see and you know, MPR is dying, and it's being defunded. No one's listening. And then they essentially just shared the same content they've been making for decades, on a different platform in a more accessible way that people wanted to listen on. And people instantly connected with it in a new way and the audience is younger than ever. They're, they're a behemoth in terms of the podcast. influence. So I think that the explosion comes from the fact that audio is a very accessible and powerful tool to use to market and communicate. And podcasting just clicked as a new platform that people could do it that people could share those ideas on, and really have an opportunity to do it in an affordable, regular and authentic way. So I think, I think it was just it was just a distribution problem. And that's been fixed now.   I take a different approach. Rhys laughs at me on this because I put the marketers head on. And I and I think about the notion of radio or audio not being as good as another platform. I think of it as from a marketing standpoint, if you pick just one platform and run with it, you're dead in the water. You need to understand the strengths of each of these different platforms and what they're trying to achieve. podcasting is is really unique, and I think that the decline of radio where it used to be on mass and the IBM and Nielsen ratings start to say that the traditional, you know, the jazz station had a, you know, sort of a macro audience not really finite. podcasting is so unique in its ability to be so hyper focused on one particular topic. It is niche as decent can be. So I like that as a platform to be able to say I could communicate any type of particular message to whatever particular audience and that gets back to your idea of, you know, what makes a successful podcast? Is it? Is it mass appeal? Is it mass reach? Is it talking to an audience of one? Is it a personal journey, or a personal journey, a journal rather. So trying to figure out what you're using a podcast for? Like all platforms, they have a place and a space.   Dan Seguin  8:42  How easy is it for someone to get started in podcasting? Do you have to be a celebrity because I'm clearly not, or have a big name brand to launch a podcast?   Jonathan Burns  8:56  It's a funny question. It gets back to the success what is your key performance indicator, what's that measurement of what you're trying to achieve? And, and I look at the successful podcasts that are getting millions and millions of downloads. And sometimes I scratched my head. And I wonder how they navigated through the clutter. Fame certainly helps from a volume standpoint, but you've got other things that are done by the quality of the content. I look at the daily the daily is always in the top 10 and talks about breaking news. And it's a it's a news aggregator that talks about specific stories of things that are going on. It does its job really well. And so it's not driven by fame and fortune. It's about the content more than anything else.   Rhys Waters  9:44  I mean, there's a whole industry that has sprung up overnight around how can podcasters reach bigger audiences there's endless discussions on forums about how can I get more downloads How can I you know, appear on higher rankings In Apple, and up till about three months ago, I was I was of the cynical mindset of thinking that unless you're part of a big network or you've got a friend on the inside to be able to be on the front page of Apple was impossible. But the last two months, I've been on a bit of a roller coaster journey with a new project where we had zero brand recognition, zero, celebrity power, zero social media following and it's now become a show that is on the front page of apple in Canada and is in the top 50 shows and the top 10 for genre. And that has just come out of nowhere. And that was purely following the guidelines that Apple provide by offering something different to an audience that didn't have access to that to that show. So it is possible to break through even if you don't have all those, all those big people in your corner back in you and helping you launch in the first place.   Dan Seguin  10:56  Could someone expand on what makes a podcast great. Can you provide an example of a podcast doing it right?   Jonathan Burns  11:05  Well, I was just I wanted to build more on your point that recently we just talked about which was the the surprise success of one of the podcasts that we've been working on. And, and it's like anybody who says I can give you a viral video, don't believe that. It's, there are formulas and things that you think might make it popular. But finding that success is sometimes elusive. But as Rhys was just talking about in one of his examples there was it you don't necessarily need to know somebody in placement. You don't need to be a part of a network. You don't need to fit those traditional structures, you can still find success without it. But understanding that the success needs to be sort of anchored or sorry, the podcast needs to be anchored in some key principles of good production value, good quality, interesting topics. well spoken people. A variety of those elements that make all podcasts good, making sure you've got those fundamentals and foundations, I think is crucial in this day and age, you can't launch with a with a, you know, just your Apple phone in the basement, roughly getting up to market. It maybe you can get but it'll be a it'll be a stretch.   Rhys Waters  12:21  I think I think for me the secret of most of the great podcasts that have really risen and built a huge audience is that they have a genuine connection with their audience, they have a genuine connection with the people who want that content and they really look after them and serve them the kind of ideas and entertainment and thoughts that that people really be missing that they haven't got in maybe more mainstream channels. So I think there's that those shows that are really elevated to the ones that find that audience. Look after the And then just improve what they give them and how they give it to them over time. And an example for me in terms of broadcast podcasts that are doing a really good job I am obsessed with business wars, which is a wonderful production. And it's it's an example of, of just really good storytelling, very high production value act in sound design scripting, and packaged in  a way that just is it's easy to consume. You can binge Listen, each episode is like 30 minutes long. But the The reason I like it is that they tell the stories that you haven't heard about, about great business rivalries like Puma versus Adidas or Chevy versus Ford. And what they do is really bring to life those behind the scenes deals and bought boardroom kind of battles and vendettas that people have. And so they've reframing a business topic in a completely new way. And that's what really engages Me too. And to me is an example of of a great podcast is going well, what can we do in the podcast realm that we can't do everywhere else? And then really running with it.   Dan Seguin  14:13  Rhys, Jonathan, let's talk discoverability with over 850,000 active podcasts out there, what are the best strategies to be discovered? How does one go about promoting podcasts and grow a listenership?   Jonathan Burns  14:31  I guess as the marketer, I may want to tackle this one. And it's a it's a tough, tough question. I don't know if you've actually watched anybody scroll through their Instagram feed. They've been talking about the attention span of people getting shorter and shorter and shorter. You look at your four second ad spots, all of this kind of stuff. And we've been talking about sort of the brand promise making sure that things are aligned and what the deliverables going to be. And that means anything from the thumbnail the image that people first see to the title For a search, but also for a relevance of the conversation, to everything from show notes to the first tone, and music of the podcast needs to all be sort of aligned. So that if you're able to get the discoverability, from an image to a write up to, to the title of the podcast, and getting into the space will get you from interest to subscriber. But that's only on on the podcast platforms, we are huge fans of saying, Let's leverage other platforms, other communities to be able to drive traffic back to the actual podcast. And that means micro content, small bits, small cut small pieces of for example, this interview this conversation to put onto say LinkedIn for that audience to be able to say I'm interested in that topic or that conversation or that one liner, and it becomes an audio clip or a sentence from a video standpoint or a visual standpoint, even from the transcripts of the show to actually then generate a blog post, to be able to use this content in a variety of different ways in different mediums. It's not all about getting found On on Spotify, for example, it might be how do I get found on my Instagram channel and using those to build those communities so that people inevitably move back and forth across those platforms across those channels to get engaged with the conversation that you're having?   Rhys Waters  16:16  Yeah, from my point of view, I kind of when you look when you look at an audience or when you have a conversation with an audience, the  interesting thing is the statistics really show that there are two things that are really driving recommendations. Sorry that there are two things that are really driving the people to new shows and to discover new shows. And that is firstly, recommendations and secondly topic. So a lot of the statistics will see recommendations from friends from family from from co workers who have a similar interest in in those kinds of shows are in podcasting. And the only way to get that is by making a really good show that people are willing to go out on a limb to recommend which isn't easy. There's no easy way to make a great podcast. But that is one of the most powerful ways to do it. And secondly, in terms of topic, talking about a topic that you're passionate about that you have something interesting to say. And then would help with discoverability. And like some people, I've seen some stats where, you know, people search in a podcast platform by that topic, because they want to learn about that topic. So making sure that you describe the episodes and you have good show notes. And all of that information is is kind of built in so that you are discoverable through that topic, but then also engaging with audiences and and forums and groups online that are centered around those topics too. Often sharing a podcast on on a Facebook group, for instance, is really relevant to that group can drive a lot of traffic back to your to your podcast too.   Dan Seguin  17:56  so promoting a podcast takes time and growth. Depends on consistently producing engaging content. What's a realistic goal for a podcaster to aim for in terms of percentage of growth? To know if they are successful? Is it about that? Or are there other indicators of success?   Rhys Waters  18:20  in terms of setting a goal for new podcasters for growth and success? I think that the the key indicator of success is what you define it to be in the first place. If you want to be the next Joe Rogan then chances are you're going to be disappointed for the next 10 years. But I'd be you might not be you might you might be the next Joe Rogan. But realistically, if if you're still talking about something with passion, and you're getting response from people and you know that people care about what you're talking about and enjoying the conversations you're having, to me that would be a measure of success. If you're talking and somebody listening, then that is as it is in its purest form. That is what podcasting is about. And for me, personally, you having fun, you know, a lot of people start podcasts as a passion project, you start having fun and it becomes a real labor, then it's not going that's not a successful podcast that becomes a burden on you where you feel indebted to constantly put out this put out this content. So when you are planning, how often Am I going to release this show? You know, how long should the show be? People should think about that how would the quality will be affected by the quantity so if you're really chasing stories or angles or interviews for a weekly show, and really struggling to find voices, you know, your podcast is not in a good place, you're not doing the excited, interesting things that you set out to do, where you want this to have a balance between a regular a regular show that is growing an audience and having the impact you want. But you also want to make sure that you maintain that that level of quality and excitement with every show that you put out which there's a balancing act between Giving people something as rapidly as possible, but also making sure that what you do put out is something that you're satisfied and something, you know, your listeners will be satisfied with too.   Jonathan Burns  20:09  I actually want to steal Rhys's story. He presented this or talked about this a few months back at a conference and I really liked the story because we were talking around. If it's just about audience acquisition, it's to finite a goal, you're either gonna hit it or miss it. And it is too difficult to be able to say in two months, I'm going to have a quarter of a million listeners. So understanding what those objectives are, are very important. Rhys was working on a podcast that found phenomenal success great fan engagement, they were in the merchandise and live events. And the BBC had said you know what, we wanted this podcast and put it on the broadcast. We actually want to make it into a TV spot as well. And it more often it evolved As they're going along and seeing these levels of success, it moved their benchmark, their goals shifted, and all of a sudden it was, can't wait to be on TV. And it failed miserably from a TV standpoint, I shouldn't say that Rhys, it didn't fail - It didn't exceed our high expectations.   It didn't have the same level of success when it transferred from one platform to the next. There's my political response. But But as he was wrapping up this story, talking about the evolution of this podcast, there was some writers that were some comments from fans that were writing in to say things like, the comedy was so fantastic. I was having a down day in my car, I laughed so hard I soiled myself. Stroked the ego of a comedian to say really, I'm in this not for the dollar, but I'm in it for the psychological rewards that I get from doing a good thing or a good product. And it shifted around that. And so part of our dialogue on setting key performance indicators and specific goals is to understand really why you're doing this. If it is for purely monetization, not thought or thought leadership or whatever your structure is, know that when you start out because inevitably, if you're not doing it with a with a balanced measure of passion, and enthusiasm, you're gonna die out, you're not going to be able to achieve whatever you're doing. There's been some great podcasters that had found success from an audience acquisition standpoint that eventually said, I didn't like doing what I was doing. I didn't like the person that I was, I'm exhausted. And inevitably, regardless of that, that success from an audience standpoint, couldn't sustain what they were doing. So our recommendation always is understand why you're doing it. Understand what those goals are, and making sure that you keep that in the back of your mind are always a part of that big picture.   Dan Seguin  22:57  I've read that content is king, but distribution is Queen and she wears the pants. I couldn't agree with that more. What advice can you give on cross channel promotion? And how can social media channels grow your show? Where should podcasters focus their time and marketing effort?   Rhys Waters  23:20  And I think that one of the most important things with a podcast is to not just upload to an RSS feed and sit and wait, I think that there's still a huge percentage of the population that that doesn't really engage with podcasts and doesn't have the podcast app on the phone. Even if it's pre installed, they might have never even opened it. So there's a real missed opportunity. And often, when podcasting first came out, there was the whole conversation of saying, Have you heard my podcast? What's the podcast? Here, download this app. You know, there were there were barriers and several stages to get through to get someone to engage with it. But when you have something like a platform like YouTube, where you can do a video version of your podcast, whether it's just whether it's actually filming yourself record or whether it's just a logo or whether it's an animated version, whatever you can do. And that is a platform that everybody uses is one of the biggest search engines, you know, in the world. So making sure you put your podcast in places where people will find it, even if they're not into podcasting, is is so important. So not thinking about it in a way where it's exclusive to people who like podcasts, it's exclusive to people who are regular kind of power listeners, make sure that you you meet people where they're comfortable, and you give it to them in a way that they want to enjoy it.   Jonathan Burns  24:41  I couldn't agree with you more on that there. There has to be that balance between content creation and content distribution. I think I was reading somewhere that said it's almost a 5050 time split for every hour that you spend building the product you need to spend an hour promoting and distributing the product. I take a step back and think about The platforms that you need to promote on are all driven from who your audience is. And so if you understand who that listener is, and where they are, invest time and energy onto those platforms. So if you have a youthful audience that you're talking about current issues, that you want to be able to connect with them. Consider a tictok in an Instagram structure. If you're looking at an older demographic, and you're trying to understand what you're trying to communicate in a longer form, consider a Facebook structure. As Rhys mentioned, from a search standpoint, getting found is is difficult, unless you're in those communities in those spaces where your audience is. So I take the step back and say first thing is understand who you're talking to. Who is that that listener Who's that persona and plan and define a strategy around those personas.   Dan Seguin  25:51  You've covered this in your blog, that ratings and reviews are important, but given the number of podcast channels available. It's not always easy to get accurate representation of your metrics. Given that unique complexity of ways podcasts are consumed and downloaded, what is the best way to track and measure their performance?   Rhys Waters  26:19  That's the thing is there's so many aggregators that you put your show on in terms of Spotify and Apple and Google and Stitcher and pod bean and all the different places you put them, in order to pull them all together in one place is, is arduous and confusing and can be difficult. So you might have ratings and reviews on one platform that you never even see because you've never even looked at it. People tend to go to Apple as they as they go to from reviews and ratings. But there are other places where you might be building an audience you might not even be aware of, or there might be some important feedback and review you never see so I really like Chartable which is a really good tool. Where you can essentially link up lots of your key data from those platforms in one place. So he's got Spotify integration, he's got Apple integration through the iTunes Connect platform. And you can create a profile. And then you can add all these different apps and links into it. And it just puts all of your data in one place. It lets you know where you're ranking in charts globally and territories. It lets you know how often you're getting ratings and reviews, it gives you averages. And if you if you sync the data properly, it also gives you an idea of listener drop off. So who, what percentage of people are listening right to the end? What percentage of people you know, where are you losing your audience or so like one of the things that really helped me with having that platform was I could also track other shows that were maybe similar and it wouldn't give me the obviously it wouldn't give you as much detailed data about somebody else's show. You could you could check out the rankings in the charts and it'll give you a good indication of of where you are and what the downloads mean. And if you really aspire to a show you can, you can kind of see see what how they're performing and if and if what they're doing works and if it doesn't work. So I kind of find that as a really, really good central place to look at different information and to start investigating and digging in new ways that you maybe couldn't, on each individual one.   Jonathan Burns  28:22  On the flip side, pod starter is not usually looking to create the next pod star. We usually have clients that are company organizations that are saying their mandate is a little bit different, whether it's to increase the amount of thought leadership that the company is perceived as, increasing their social reach. So a lot of our clients will typically use a podcast not to grow an audience in the podcast structures but to increase traffic to the website or increase traffic to a particular page on a website or social channels. So we end up having to From an analytic standpoint, use a mash up of from Google Analytics to the hosting platforms that we're using to be able to see who's downloading and viewing the podcast. We had a client that said, for every hundred view of a podcast that we had created for them, they were having a 10 x multiplier on the website view, meaning that the actual podcast page was getting the traffic into the space, but people then weren't clicking on the podcast, they were then going somewhere else within the website. So they used us as not a lead generation but as a, an audience acquisition for the website instead of the podcast. And that gets back to why are you doing the podcast and from a business standpoint, a lot of the times it's not just building a podcast audience it's about other tactics and other strategies to be able to have dialogues with their intended customer, future prospects, etc.   Dan Seguin  29:50  Okay, so where you would fit in that funnel?   Jonathan Burns  29:51  Yeah, exactly. Right. So it for a lot of the times when you think of a podcast podcasts are great from having deep honest conversations typically unedited. there's a there's a transparentness in that dialogue. And that is sort of a top line funnel conversation about about a branding opportunity to be able to say, we have thought leadership in this particular space, listen to the people that are having this conversations, we want to be a part of that community. And if that strikes a balance between a potential customer and existing customer and it goes to loyalty or acquisition, whatever it is, from a from a sales and marketing standpoint, you're now in that community and having that dialogue. It's like when social media was first being launched, everyone was going, how am I going to use that as a business tool? And and you look at the airlines that sort of embraced it as an opportunity to use it from a customer service standpoint, to use it as a loyalty standpoint, to be able to measure people's opinions of their service in the space. podcasting has that really unique way to have these these these broad topics, these interesting conversations and being able to stamp an organization's participation within that space. It's really interesting.   Dan Seguin  31:02   Let's talk about length, format and frequency. What are some podcast production best practices? What are the key elements of a podcast that should be optimized to reach and engage?   Rhys Waters  31:20  I've read that the ideal duration is 20 minutes and the ideal release frequency is weekly. And that's based on averages and just looking at across the board what has performed best, but I don't, that is not an there's not a rule that is not a one size fits all kind of answer to that question. And I think you have to make the show that fits your conversation. So if you're doing a very quick news roundup Daily Show, you're going to be looking at five minutes if you're doing something that is a weekly show, you know, 15 to 20 minutes is a good duration to look at. I mean, but there is some shows that have had huge success and Built massive audiences that do really deep dives. There's one podcast that I've worked on and off with called astonishing legends. And they cover like mysteries and true crime and paranormal and conspiracy topics. And they do it in a very kind of high level deep research way. So one topic, they did four episodes, and it was probably about a total of eight hours of content with really detailed research. They actually have a team of researchers working on their shows. So that show is hugely successful because they take the time and an effort to really dive into a topic in a way that other shows don't necessarily have the time or energy to do so. So I think that you've really got to look at what your goals are. Wait, what is this podcast trying to do? And, and who do we really want to appeal to who do we think will listen, who is the audience that we imagined in our heads and really fitted around that because although a weekly 20 minute show Probably would get more traction. It might not be what you'll it might not meet the the goals that you've set out, it might not allow you to do what you want to do in the space.   Jonathan Burns  33:10  I guess maybe the only thing I could add to it is, is understanding what people are doing while they're listening to your podcast. And that shifts their activity. So if I'm actually doing it at work, I've got a longer period of being able to listen to the background, if I've decided to download a podcast because I have to mow the lawn once as long as it's going to take to mow the lawn or wash the dishes or whatever the chore or the activity is, if I'm driving into work, I don't want to download six or seven podcasts, I would like to actually have the longer form that suits that traffic duration, right. So it kind of understanding that niche probably has an impact  on how long people are getting to the end of it. But I think the better points, which is what Rhys talked about, which was the content itself should dictate how long it's going to be if it's quick updates from a newsworthy standpoint, five minutes or less. I got my update and I If I went, if it's a long form deep dive into a crime story, for example, it's as long as the story takes it to be. But the smart, smart podcasters also know, if they're starting to lose their audience at a particular point. I need to scale it back. I need to edit it a bit better. I need to make the story tighter. Other than all that I know exactly what Rhys - he's right.   Rhys Waters  34:25  I was driving back and forth, St. JOHN between Halifax and St. JOHN, last summer. And it's about a four hour drive and I was measuring the distance based on what I would plan my podcasts around that four hour duration. So I got a two hour podcast, I'll stop for a break. And then and then I'll put another hour and then I'll stop for a coffee and then another. So it's funny how people kind of will choose shows just based on the duration alone, depending on the context how they're listening is is something that people don't always consider, but it can be really powerful in terms of the listening experience and how people are enjoying your content.   Dan Seguin  35:00  Yeah, now I've read a staggering stat that 75% of all podcasts fall victim to pod-fading. What are some recommended strategies to avoid that creator fatigue? How do you keep it spicy.   Rhys Waters  35:17  So, I would say that if you're a podcaster, and you have suddenly built a blossoming audience and your formula works, sometimes it can be terrifying to deviate from that formula and do something different. But then there's the the equal danger of remaining the same and becoming stale and losing your audience because you've become too predictable. So you do want to innovate and develop and improve your show over time. And that is terrifying for some people. Because, obviously, you don't want to put a foot wrong. You don't want to lose your audience. But the amazing thing about podcasts is that it is a community. So what you can do is you can have a conversation with your audience with your listeners, ask them for feedback. If they care about your show and they're tuning in, they care about the creative direction of it. So you can try things out, let them know you want to try something out and let them know if they like it or not. You can, it's not, you're not just throwing stones down while waiting for something to go plop, you're having a conversation with someone and you become part of their lives. So you should use that to help you improve your show and grow. And that will keep you excited, they'll keep you interested, they'll keep you engaged, they'll keep your audience engaged, and it means that it becomes much more of a an engaging process where you don't lose that creative energy and thirst because you you can tell yourself that you I'm getting better people you know the show's developing where we're going in a direction that we never expected to and this is exciting.   Jonathan Burns  36:48  I couldn't disagree with this more. There's nothing wrong with pod fade, pod fade every good thing needs to come to an end and It all does. You can't keep it going forever. It becomes a question of whether it's exhaustion or losing focus or losing interest, losing passion, but it is going to come to an end inevitably. I go back to our earlier conversation about understanding why you're doing it. And I think that becomes part of the motivators. If you've, if you understand your your, your inspiration and your drive and the reasons for doing this, it's going to extend that and keep you honed in and focused on the those the, you know, the creative principles that make your show good. And as you get better, we're always trying to strive for perfection and we're trying to improve, and if you're engaged with the process, it's going to go as long as it's going to go. But iteration, pivoting, changing, all of that is is normal as well. And so I'm I pod fades a funny term because pod fade sort of has that notion of exhaustion. I don't want to do this anymore. I can't continue and then it becomes a betrayal to your audience. I I'm on the other side of that I think good things can naturally come to an end. And you can start something new again. So So like I said, I completely disagree with   Rhys Waters  38:11  this happens a lot.   Dan Seguin  38:13  Okay,   Jonathan Burns  38:14  not publicly usually.   Rhys Waters  38:17  We both we both thrive off the creative energy of having different perspectives on what you what you can create in that so is a positive thing.   Dan Seguin  38:25  Speaking of digital marketing, podcasting is a great tool to add to your marketing strategy. How do podcasts impact search engine optimization?   Jonathan Burns  38:41  Actually, you're from a from a digital standpoint? Yes, I'll answer. I think we both should, because there's a lot of shifts now on on Google's algorithm looking for audio content. And trying to make sure it was one of the reasons why we transcribed most of the podcasts that we're doing because it has helps the algorithms find the topics that are being conversed. We are not experts on search engine optimization. However, we have a, you know, sort of a loose understanding of key topics and making sure keywords are distributed throughout all of your platforms. But yeah,it's a, I would stumble to answer this question accurately on how to best make your content optimized for search engines,   Rhys Waters  39:25  I guess. Fundamentally, this is an audio format, but most people find things by typing it in in a text format. So as the opportunities where you can really, you know, like Jonathan said, transcribe, and have decent show notes that really go into detail about who's on your show, what are they talking about what topics are relevant, you know, really trying to extract as much text based information from your podcast and putting it in an arena that is discoverable in those search terms, whether that's getting featured in news articles, whether that's tagged on YouTube, whether that is a section on your website or a blog post that is primarily just show notes for each podcast. That's the, you know, the making sure that that audio is translated into that text. medium is the only way to do it. But Jonathan's right in terms of search engine optimization. We're not experts in that, but the tools of transcription and sharing that is probably the best way to go down that route.   Dan Seguin  40:28  I'd love to hear your thoughts on what makes podcast so inherently personal. Is it that the experience of listening is intimate? That story creates a human connection? I'd love to hear your thoughts on this one.   Rhys Waters  40:45  I think in the most basic terms of communication and storytelling, the human voice, you know, we've evolved for the human voice to be our main form of communication. That's how that's how, even when we were sitting around campfires sharing fables and stories. And, you know, it comes back to that kind of moment really where you people would share information, through stories through that medium in a way that really connects and really kind of educates people and really makes people feel so podcast is just a modern retake on on that. So it's built into us fundamentally to kind of flat to work is built in fundamentally for us to listen for us to enjoy that voice and build a relationship and really buy into what is being said. And one of the things that one of the stories I really like is the the storyteller the stories that are told by Australian Aboriginal tribes. And the stories they tell are actually maps. So if you wanted to get from one place to another, there was a story you would remember. And that story was actually gave you directions so as the hero went on, this journey might encounter a snake or A giant and it would resemble the landscape as you go. And it just shows that, you know, being able to remember a story that you've been told in that way, is such a powerful way of retaining information and learning and just absorbing what is what is being shared with you.   Jonathan Burns  42:19  Yeah, I think I mean, if I break it into two different categories, right, there's the scripted in the unscripted format. And the the scripted is usually really good at actually telling those specific stories. But I like I like the unscripted notion because it's like gathering around the campfire. And it's bringing people into those dialogues as an unscripted conversation. It's honest, you can reveal your character, your thoughts, what you're about, you don't really it's, it's exposing. People that are listening to this can make their assumptions and judgments of Daniel, myself and Rhys of the of the characters and the people that we are as we're speaking And I think I think that's the intimacy behind it. Somebody is able to participate in the conversation by being involved with it. Not necessarily having a voice on the show, but but still having a voice in some capacity. You're it's intimate I find, right. And I think of it as like that campfire invitation where people are gathered around, sharing thoughts, sharing ideas, sharing opinions, in an honest, humorous way.   Dan Seguin  43:29  Okay, are you able to share with our listeners, what podcasts you're loving right now?   Jonathan Burns  43:36  I love I listen to Masters of Scale. I've listened to it for a while. And it's from the one of the founders of LinkedIn. I like Masters of Scale, because it is the sort of the behind the scenes story of successful people before they're successful. And it and it talks about the humanity of us all. We all started in different spaces. And there's the It's the journey of your life or your career or success or a failure. And it goes into things like you know, fail fast and understanding that failure helps you grow and evolve. But I like the I like the tone of it. I like the casual approach. I like the behind the scenes look and feel. It's one of the ones that that I stick to, but also for coming from a Canadian standpoint. I put on The Debaters frequently, frequently from CBC as as a sort of a noise in the background to make me smile.   Rhys Waters  44:34  For me, I really like the insight you can get from podcasts and the conversations you can drop in on so I'm really into a show called The Art of the Cut, which is basically a podcast for video editors and people who are really nerdy about video editing and film methods. But they have some amazing guests. They have people who edited like the new Star Wars film or films like Ford versus Ferrari any any films that are, you know, released recently or big blockbuster movies, they have a really in depth conversation with the the team who edited them. And as someone who kind of geeks out on film,  it's just heaven. So that's what I really like about it. I don't know where I would hear those conversations without this medium. So it's a big recommendation. If you're as geeky as me about films.   Dan Seguin  45:25  Rhys, Jonathan, we've reached the end of another episode of The ThinkEnergy podcast. Last question for you. How can our listeners learn more about your company? about you? How can they connect?   Rhys Waters  45:42  Well, you could go to podstarter.io, which is our website which is the company that we founded and you can find all of our links to social media. You can get in touch with us you can read a bit about the kind of the work we do in the shows we've produced. And also I have a we also have a podcast called Podstarter. We've also have a podcast sorry, called pod starter that basically is us interviewing different podcasters, who have been on different journeys and have different stories to tell. And the idea is that we just want to look at successes, we want to look at failures, we want to look at the good and the bad. So you can listen in and learn about those experiences. And it's a real resource that we share with clients and with people we can usually find from our interviews a relevant story for for a client to to drop in and go out this is there's a lot of elements within this podcast, a story that I can learn from. And then I also have a show called Canadian politics is boring, which is a comedy show that we only started two months ago but has found an audience quite quickly and it's it's very, very silly, very fun kind of look at Canadian politics and you can find out find that on Canadianpoliticsisboring.com.   Jonathan Burns  46:59  I was gonna say if you type in pod starter and don't find us we're not doing our job very well. So yeah, #podstarter. I think the only the only surprise is the podstarter.io. But the search engines do, straighten that out. And then from a social standpoint, we are everywhere we need to be.   Dan Seguin  47:23  Again, thank you so much for joining me today. I hope you had a lot of fun.   Rhys Waters  47:29  Great, thank you.   Jonathan Burns  47:30  Thank you for having us. Appreciate it!   Dan Seguin  47:32  Thank you for joining us today. I truly hope you enjoyed this episode of think energy podcasts. For past episodes. Make sure you visit our website hydroottawa.com/podcast. Lastly, if you found value in this podcast, be sure to subscribe. Anyway, this podcast is a wrap. Cheers, everyone.

Brands are struggling to find a new way to authentically connect to their customers and we are witnessing major communication disruptions. In an article that appeared in Adweek, Twitter said that users now trust influencers like YouTubers, almost as much as their friends. This is the age of influencer marketing. So here's today's big question. Should brands consider adding influencer marketing to their everyday marketing mix and is there a right way, and a wrong way to do it. Neal Schaffer, author of ‘The Age of Influence” gives us the scoop. Related Content & Links: https://hydroottawa.com/ Twitter feed: @NealSchaffer Amazon link to book: The Age of Influence: The Power of Influencers to Elevate Your Brand on paperback Website: nealschaffer.com Apple podcast link- Maximize Your Social Influence Podcast Transcript: Dan Seguin 0:02 Hey everyone! I'm Dan Segin from Hydro Ottawa. And I'll be hosting the ThinkEnergy podcast. PewDiePie, Dude Perfect, Hola Soy German, Whindersson Nunes, and El Rubius. While perhaps not household names to you and I, they are powerful influencers to Gen Z's audiences aged 13 to 18. In fact, these youtubers combined have 262 million subscribers, and are more influential to this generation than movie stars and politicians. It's not surprising that today's consumers are increasingly more savvy and critical of branded advertising. Gone are the days where advertising messages and propositions were trusted and taken at face value. In an online world where advertising is seen as more intrusive than valuable. Brands are struggling to find a new way to authentically connect to their customers, we are witnessing major communication disruptions. This includes declining television viewership, continued growth of social media audiences, an increase in ad blocking technology media Fasting, and a significant rise of noise clutter on all channels. It's becoming increasingly more difficult for brands, particularly energy brands to keep up with the digital landscape, as consumers take extreme measures to avoid being advertised to. With demand for attention on the rise and overwhelming product options on the market, consumers are beginning to lose sight of who they can trust. Is the energy industry facing a Kodak moment? In an article that appeared in Adweek, Twitter said that users now trust influencers like YouTubers, almost as much as their friends. This is the age of influencer marketing. So here's today's big question. Should brands consider adding influencer marketing to their everyday marketing mix and is there a right way, and a wrong way to do it. Our guest is no stranger to social media and the marketing world. He's the author of three books, teaches digital media to executives at New Jersey Business School, has a podcast called maximize your social influence, orchestrates digital transformation for leading businesses and is fluent in Japanese and Mandarin Chinese. Dear listeners, please welcome Neal Schaffer. Hey Neil, how would you define influencer marketing? And can you give us some examples of brands doing it well? Neal Schaffer 3:48 Thanks Daniel. So influencer marketing is something that I think a lot of people are mystifying or they're mis educated on or they've been misinformed about. You know, when I look at influencer marketing, I look at Who has online influence? Who has digital influence? So, yes, celebrities have digital influence. But there's a lot of other people that I've influenced because there's so many of us that use social media that build communities, in the hundreds in the thousands in the 10s of thousands, but even those people that have communities in the thousands are still able to influence others, right. And even in the influencer marketing industry, where they have gone smaller and smaller, you know, with each year we they used to talk about macro influencers, then mid tier influencers, and then micro influencers, which are people that have between, you know, 50 to maybe 500,000 followers. And then over the last year or two, we talked about nano influencers, people with one to 10,000 followers. And if you think about, you know, I don't know about Canada, I'm assuming it's pretty similar demographic wise, but in the United States, the majority of the workforce are millennials. So these are digital natives that have been doing social media since it began. And they've built up communities over time, right. And so when you start to look around you realize that there's a lot of people that already know like and trust us that already may have some influence. These might be employees, these might be your customers, your followers online people that mentioned your brand online that have some brand affinity for you. So, you know, when when so many people immediate influences become so democratized anybody can really have influence. And that's where I tell, you know, the companies that I work with, don't just look at number of followers, but also look at that brand affinity and your chances of success of working with nano influencers that actually are your customers are going to be much greater than working with a celebrity who just sees working with you as a one time transaction, you really want to develop long term relationships. So, you know, there is as far as brands, I mean, there are so many consumer brands that are doing influencer marketing, it's crazy. In fact, Estee Lauder is an example of a brand that they announced that 75% of their marketing budget is going to influencer marketing. There's one brand that I like to bring up as sort of a case study they're called Rose Field and they are a watch company. So they, you know, there's a bunch of these, like watch brands that, that you've never heard of them, but all of a sudden they pop up on Instagram, and everyone's talking about them. And now they're a huge company. So they're actually, I believe they're originally a Dutch company, they also have a headquarters in New York City. And they basically have created really the ideal type of program that I talked about in the age of influence, which is really, you know, the build a long term program of people that already know like, and trust you. So how do they build the program? Well, they went into their email list, they went into their customer, you know, database, and they looked at their followers, and just by doing this exercise, they found Wow, there's a lot of people of influence that that already know, like, and trust us and from there, you know, some of them were better content creators, so let's use those to do you know, those people, maybe we work more on the content side. Some were really great, you know, amplifiers, they weren't the best content creators are aligned with a brand but they create a lot of great conversations, they can amplify. And then there are others that might refer us to other members. And they made it open anyone and everyone, I mean, anyone can apply. And from that program, they've just developed a tremendous amount of benefits, you know, increases all around the board in terms of KPIs, and all they've given to everyone that's joined is either exclusive access to, you know, products before they go on sale, or basically shop points that they can shop for free. So there's no monetary transaction. And when I tell this to people blows them away, there's so used to this, pay someone $100 or $1,000, on Instagram, and we don't know where that money's going, or if they're, if the influence is real, or so there's a lot of different ways of doing it. And, you know, I tell brands, you know, really think holistically about who has influence. It's not just the celebrities, there's a lot more influence a lot more people with influence out there. And if we go back to the model that, you know, more than almost 20 years ago, this model that says the top 1% of online users or content creators, you then have 9% that are sort of engagers/commenters, and they have 90% that are lurkers? Well the top 1% of any social network is a lot of people. I mean, if LinkedIn is 500 million users, that's 5 million people that you can engage with, right? If Instagram has 1 billion that's still you know, 10 million people. So there's a lot of people out there don't just think celebrities really think holistically and find people that you can align with and collaborate with for mutual benefit. Dan Seguin 8:23 What was the driving force behind your book on influencer marketing? Neal Schaffer 8:28 So I you know, in classic sort of, you know, content marketing or marketing we want to serve our customer. We want to serve our community. And it's interesting because with Coronavirus, this is my advice for every company. How can you serve your community? If you can't serve them physically? How do you serve them virtually, there are restaurants here in Orange County, California where I live that you know, you can order like a box family meal and they'll include facemask. They'll include toilet paper, right? It's one way of serving their community, even above and beyond your own product. So with that in mind you exist you know business exists to serve society, this actually a quote from an executive at Walmart, believe it or not that I like to share, and with Coronavirus, we all sort of tap into that. So, because of that I am the exact same way. I'm an educator, I'm an author. I'm a consultant. I'm a speaker. So it's all about what are the needs in the market? And I really found about two to three years ago, this was a question that I kept getting a lot about, not just influencer marketing, but a lot of marketers that are saying, you know, my friend is making $1,000 every time they post on Instagram, how do I become an influencer? So this concept of digital influence, I thought there was something to it and the more research I did Daniel, the more I realized all this miseducation in that it had a lot more power than most people in businesses knew about. And that's why I decided to write the book and the book actually was a test market on a crowdfunding platform, but it did so well that I'm gonna write the book and then you know, HarperCollins leadership reaches out to me and, and the rest is history. So, and I still think you know, when we look at marketing, communications, right, you have a website you have content for search engines, right? You have you have content marketing, you have email, you have social media and I believe that sort of, you know, collaborating with others through influencer marketing, whether it's employees or customers or, or outside people becomes another sort of pillar of marketing communication that I think every company should have a budget for. So I think it's going to really have long term value. It's definitely not just a trend, but it's going to serve companies that read the book and listen to this podcast well, Dan Seguin 10:28 Neil, let me ask you this: If the goal is to plug into the communities and connect energy brands to new audiences through the voice and trusted relationships of an influencer, how do brands ensure a proper fit? Neal Schaffer 10:46 Yeah, that's a great question. And that's an area where I think a lot of brands that just chase that number of followers model, there's a relevance in a few different ways that there has to be content relevance, right. So if they are, you know, people out there that maybe once they talked about solar energy, right, so maybe you have a Solar Energy Initiative and you want to align with them. But when you do further analysis, they talked about solar energy once in their last 100 posts. And really, they don't talk about solar energy at all. It's just something that came up. So this is a mistake, you use an analytic tool, oh, they've talked about solar energy, you immediately contact them, and it's not their main thing. So that's one area where you may have misalignment is on the content side, you're working with the wrong person. And if you throw money out, I'm sure they'll take it, right. I mean, some influencers really are in it for the money, not everybody, right? Those are the ones you don't want to work with. But then there's the brand alignment. And this comes down to you know, the tone of their content that the visuals they use, and really, you know, if you can imagine if your content appeared in their feed, just from a philosophical perspective, would it be aligned with your brand. would it look right, would it look right in their feed and would it look right to you as well, but it looks like a good representation. You can't really control how it's going to look. But if it's something similar in look and feel, what's that alignment look like and this is why, Daniel, you know, marketing is sort of this one to many approach. But I believe that influencer marketing is almost we can almost call it influencer relations. And it's almost more geared towards public relations than marketing because it really is a one to one you really need to do analysis, you may find a few hundred people through a tool or through analysis, but you really got to dig deep into each one to make sure that there is alignment on those different areas that I talked about. Dan Seguin 12:37 What kind of return on investment does influencer marketing offer compared to other marketing channels? Neal Schaffer 12:45 So there's already been a lot of data that says that you know, for every dollar spent in influencer marketing, you get $7 ROI or, you know, you get double the ROI after six months compared to traditional ad spend. So if you were to do a search for influencer marketing ROI statistics. There's a lot of studies out there. So I think that obviously, there's no one Golden Rule. But there are many ways to leverage influencers. So obviously there is that brand partnership brand sponsorship sort of content sponsorship, content amplification, right? Where if you were to work with an influencer, who agreed to amplify your content, you know, what, what would that look like in terms of the engagement they get or the clicks they get compared to what you're doing? compared to like paid media, for instance, that's a really, really good way to compare it. But there's other ways of looking at it. Daniel, what if you're a smart, small brand, who nobody is talking about online? You know, part of social media is about inciting word of mouth marketing. And the easiest way to do that is to really, you know, collaborate with influencers, send them product, get them talking about your company. And that's a really high ROI just in terms of brand awareness that it's hard for you as a brand to create, if nobody knows you, because you're gonna have to create it through advertising. And that trust factor is just very, very different, right? But we can go further, well, we're creating our own visuals and our own videos. But you know, these influencers are creating really, really good looking videos really, really good looking photos doing drone footage, but, man, we just can't do it the same way that this content creator does. So, you know, why don't we instead of doing it ourselves or hiring an agency, why don't we just directly work with the influencer? So this is an area of working with content creators to actually lower your expenses sometimes and maybe get the additional benefit that they're gonna publish that on social media as well. And then you get into Well, we really want to create a community of people we can tap into to understand what people are interested in like a focus group, right? And this is another way you can leverage influencers so the ROI like anything else in in social media, I mean, there's so many different ways to measure it, but there's also these intangible benefits that, you know, invariably, you're going to get when you do it right. Dan Seguin 14:53 Can you share with us what are the most effective forms of influencer marketing? What are your thoughts on the value of sponsored content? Neal Schaffer 15:05 So sponsored content is really interesting. You know, when we talk about sponsored content, it sort of taps into that, you know, transactional relationship. You know, we create the content, you publish it, and probably we're going to pay you money or something of that sort. So, I think there's still role that sponsored content can play. But you know, it's always going to be more authentic and more trustworthy when it comes from the influencer themselves, right? And that's an ideal scenario. But we don't all have the brand affinity with every influencer, we may not have the relationships with each influencer. So that is a way to start a relationship, right? If you want to collaborate with someone, maybe spend a little money for sponsored content for distribution, so at least your content gets out to their network. There's obviously value there. And really, you know, Daniel, in the age of influence has a chapter of like, you know, the 15 different ways you can you can work with influencers, so that definitely is one. And it's one that's been around for a while. But you know, based off that what if, in addition not sponsored content, you were going to do a giveaway, and said, Hey, we're going to give you one year of free software, or we're going to give away 100 products. And then imagine that influencer, it makes him or her look good, because they are indirectly sponsoring this giveaway where they're giving away free stuff to their community, right? And then they're gonna want to promote that even more. So then you get to this win win. And then what if, hey, as part of this, we'd love if you could, you know, create another post actually reviewing the product that's part of the giveaway, would you be interested in that? And then you begin to tap into that authentic voice of that person even though you gave them the product, hey, this company, you know, sent me the product, but all my opinions are personal, their mind. And then you get into a deeper relationship that I think, you know, the more the influencer wins, the more it's in their best interest to collaborate with you and share your content. The higher the ROI is going to be right where you want to get to a point where they're where they're an advocate, they're going to talk about you without You're even having to ask. So as an initial entryway sponsored content does have a role. And if you're working with big players, obviously sponsored content has a role there. But I would only use that as an initial strategy, not the final strategy. Dan Seguin 17:14 Influence isn't necessarily tied to popularity. A large following is not necessarily a predictor of success in influencer marketing. What are your thoughts on working with influencers that are integrated and prolific on a variety of channels, as opposed to those who limit themselves to predominantly one platform or medium? Neal Schaffer 17:39 That's a really, really good question. And I think that, you know, marketing is all about getting in front of your customer. So you first got to ask yourself, where are my customers? If you are a b2b organization, you're probably not going to be focusing on tik tok, for instance, right? That's probably not where your customer is. So you definitely want to have those channels where your customers are, you definitely want to be working with influencers that have coverage on those platforms. Now what you'll find, generally speaking, it's hard to be good at every platform. The only person that can do it is Gary Vaynerchuk. And he has a staff of, I don't know, 15-20-25 people that allow him to do that. So, for individual influencers, you'll find that they usually have one strong network. You know, when we think about tik tok, we think about Charlie, this 15 year old who, who's made it big in no time, so her she's tiktok, there's Instagram people, there's YouTube people, right. And I would almost argue that, you know, find people that are really good, you know, if you could find a mix of people, that some of them are really good at one thing, some are good at another, but they have your platforms covered. I almost think that that's going to be in terms of reach a better strategy, and it's more natural, because it's impossible to be as good in all these platforms. It's just there's just not enough time in the day to be able to do that even for really really good content creators and and where people so we're, you know, we tend to be passionate, you know, Dan, I'm sure you have like a favorite social network or to I have a favorite social network or to where we tend to spend more time and they're no different. So to expect them to be good at everything. I think it's unrealistic. And I don't think it's going to serve you well at the end. Dan Seguin 19:11 Knowing that a critical component of an effective influencer marketing campaign is establishing a trusted relationship with a relevant influencer, when who's in tune with your audience's needs and desires? and whom your audience will look to when they're making purchase decisions? Is there a checklist for companies when aligning themselves with an influencer? Neal Schaffer 19:37 Here's the thing. So I consider you know, you're trying to develop relationships with a lot of people. So let's say you come from the PR world, there's 100 different you know, newspaper reporters, media relations, you want to create relationships with all these hundred people. You might do the same outreach to all of them, but not everybody responds. So I think it's less of a checklist. I mean, yes, there are things you Want to analyze to make sure they're the right fit. At the end of the day, you're going to reach out to a lot of people, and not all of them are going to convert. And what I mean by that is not not everyone's gonna respond to you. Some will respond the first time. And then sometimes you have an autoresponder that kicks in a second email and some respond to that. Some if you go on a Twitter, they're going to respond to a DM, but everybody's different. But at the end of the day, not everybody is going to respond to your request for collaboration or your outreach. So you're only going to be working with a subset to begin with those that actually responded. So from there, I mean, the only checklist is to have an open ended conversation, right? What is it? You know, first of all, how do you normally work with companies? Have you ever worked with companies what is what are the ways in which you work with them? What is your, you know? How can we help you? Oh, you know, you're looking for speaking opportunities every month we have, you know, we have monthly town halls, you know, here in Ottawa or wherever You know, we can put you on a panel next time, right? For instance, I'm just thinking out loud here. So, you know, the only checklist is to be human. And to listen, instead of saying, we, we want you, we're going to ship your product, we want you to post, you know, once on Instagram three Instagram stories all on different days of the week. And then over the weekend, we want you to post once on Facebook once in Twitter, and we're going to send you a $25 amazon gift card. And this is the mistake that so many brands make because they don't understand what are the needs of the influence of what do they want to do. And if you offer that without asking, you could never you could come to a situation where the influencer is so angry that you that you know $25 amazon gift card would be worth their time that they're never going to respond to you again. Maybe they put your email in spam filter or they block you and you're never gonna have a chance to work with that influencer. So it's always about the most important checklist item is having that open ended conversation from there. Sure. You know, what are you going to do together, make sure you Follow up. They're people too sometimes they're they're late on things. How are you doing? How can we help you? But I don't think there's one standard, you know that there's a checklist for the process that I went through, right? which ends in then publishing content, you're analyzing that content. And then over time, you know, looking into the program, who are our best performers, maybe do more with them? Maybe try to bring some new people in maybe the least performing people maybe you don't allow in next year. You know, you have these annual contract type of relationships. But there's no as you can imagine, because everybody's so different. And their needs are so different. It's really hard to have that one standard checklist I think every marketer would love to have. Dan Seguin 22:34 Why has influencer marketing grown to become one of the most powerful form of marketing, in social media? And in general? Neal Schaffer 22:45 Yes, I think there's a few trends that have driven the growth and have increased the power of influencer marketing. And once again, we take a holistic perspective, we take a step back, and we look at how you know from a digital first mentality, how to We get the word out about our company. So we have a website check. We're doing SEO check. We're doing email marketing, marketing, automation check. We're doing content marketing, and we have a blog, we're doing content, various forms, check. We're doing social media check. Well, where else you're gonna spend your money. Right? And those are the main ones. But specifically within social media, there's a problem. Because social media organically just does not does not matter anymore. It's impossible for companies to get a lot of reach organically, because social networks are truly become pay to play. So this pushes a lot of companies into using their social media budget for performance marketing or paid social, but then it's an advertisement. It's not the same. It's not organic. Some people don't trust ads, some people come to me blockout ads, right. So that is one major trend. That is pushing people from organic to paid but paid is really not the solution on the other hand, Social media was made for people, not businesses, and who do social media? Who do users relate to? They relate to people just like them. That's why all these people have become have built these big communities. They're like us, they're not celebrities. These influences not start out as celebrities, right? They started out as people like us. They're authentic, they're transparent. And it's very, very hard for brands to do that, to compete with that. They're not humans, we talk about humanizing the brand. But at the end of the day, they're not humans, humans are humans, they have an advantage. So that's the other. That's this relatability factor, you know, any brand, could it become a talker? Could it become a YouTuber? Could they didn't write, they had the opportunity, but they failed to do that because it you know, for many reasons that we can have another podcast episode just on that. But people have gained people have seized the opportunity and they have gained that influence. So you know, these are the trends even with Coronavirus, it's no different the trends are still there. And you know with social media This notion of sort of, you know, viral word of mouth marketing, if you really want to get that going, it's not going to happen through paid advertisement. And it's not going to happen through your own organic social, it's going to happen to influencers, when other people that people relate to and trust, start talking about your brand. So those are sort of the trends that push influencer marketing. That's why you have a lot of brands and Instagram just don't even publish their own content. It's 100%, UGC, or user generated content, in recognition of that fact they can't compete, and this content is probably going to outperform. So when you take that concept and you apply it to everything you do in marketing, you begin to see the power that influencers can bring. Neal, Dan Seguin 25:40 is it fair to say that conventional marketing approaches don't stand much of a chance against the benefit content marketing provides? Where should energy brands be focusing their attention in terms of influencer marketing? Any recommendations and thoughts on leveraging user generated content from influencers and repurposing that content? Neal Schaffer 26:07 Yeah, so actually, you know, Daniel, it brings up something that I've yet to bring up. But one of my early clients was actually one of the utilities companies out here in California. And and so I had, I had a chance to work with their team. And they originally reached out to me, because they were looking for a consultant that dealt with social media crisis communications. And what I taught them was that the best way to manage crises is to do it proactively is to build goodwill. And do it. And this is actually they ended up having a major crisis A few years ago, but before that, they didn't even have a crisis they wanted to prepare for, right. So by proactively building goodwill with your community, you're now building an army of people that will support you. Right? Hopefully, when, when it's not a matter of if when things happen, because things in the utilities there's always going to be these things right. So then we start to look at Well, you know, who are the who are influencers, we're not talking about influence I look at who is active in social media as a content creator, locally. And for utilities companies, it's gonna come down to the region where you live, who are the local influencers, some of them may talk about food. Some of them may talk about passion, some of them may talk about local tourism, but there's these lifestyle categories that you can choose from where you can find people, right to collaborate with. Now, when I work with this utilities company, I realized at least the laws the United States are, if you share content from other sources, you're indirectly sponsoring them and there are regulations regarding that. So that's what makes leveraging user generated content for public utilities a little bit tricky. Now, this was several years ago. I don't know if the regulations have changed, right? So you at the end of the day, may not be able to leverage their content, your platform, but it doesn't mean you can't create a relationship with them, where maybe you interview them. Then it is your content. And probably interviews are something where you're not sponsoring them. you're reaching out, you're reaching out, you know, every maybe one day a week, you have a live stream featuring a local influencer, man, you know, if a public utility company was to reach out to an influencer, saying we'd like to feature you on our channel, can you imagine how exotic most people would be the exposure they get? So this is what I tell brands. And you know, I've talked about brands very generally here, but it applies to utilities as well. There are a lot of things that you can offer influencers as part of a collaboration outside of money. And if you offer money, it may get tricky because of the same regulations. For instance, do you have an audio studio? Do you have a video studio? You could rent that out? Hey, you know, I know you create a lot of videos, we have a video studio, you know, just whenever you want to use it, let us know we'll let you use it. I mean, that that is a unique benefit that you can offer, or if you ever need a meeting room. I mean, these are these are little things, especially utilities because you have to Big infrastructure that you can offer. And you do, you know, it's funny, this utility reached out to me because they had a small business event and where they you know, part of utilities, you have a b2c, but you have the b2b right? So for the b2b, they do these small business events, let us help educate you on you know, accounting, finance, sales, marketing, and so I was one of the speakers. So this is another area in which obviously, if you do events where you can reach out to, to influencers. So, there's a lot of different ways to do it. And I don't know why if I was a utility company, you know, in your I would be proactively doing this because that is really going to relate yourself to the community, then the people in your community see you as a partner, as a collaborator, that you're talking to all these people that a lot of people think are cool, right? It just indirectly it's going to shine on you, your brand, and it's going to make you I believe, a more trustworthy entity because there's seen someone from the company interview someone that I relate to I think that's a huge, powerful, really, really easy way that utility companies can can begin. Now, if the regulations allow you to leverage user generated content. That's awesome. So, you know, when I work with this utility company on content strategy, you know, obviously, there's some content that's that's education. Right? Please make sure you know, if you see a down a power line, please contact, you know, 911 there's certain things that as a public utility you need to put out there, you know, once a week, once a month, whatever it is. And then there's always at the time, hey, make sure you sign up for e-bill service, right? There are many benefits for utility companies. When people sign up online and do things electronically, it makes it much more efficient, right? So there's also these initiatives you have it, maybe you have like new rates, or public hearings, so that there's some public affairs things need to have, but what are you going to talk about every day? The other stuff are community stuff right? Now, if your surety company is very active in the community, as you probably are, there's a lot of stuff that you can be publishing about, which isn't directly related to energy per se, but it's indirectly related. Do what you're doing in the community. So with that bucket of content similarly, these are these are you know community heroes, hashtag community heroes where every week you bring in a different influencer and how they're contributing to the community and how by you know this foodie influencer has helped tons of small businesses generate you know income during COVID-19 what, you know, thank you for your service to our community. Tell us you know, what, what are some of your favorite restaurants locally? This is I mean utility company because we serve people that you should become sort of the local voice, local cultural voice of your community and influencers are the key to help you do that. Dan Seguin 31:36 How important are social listening tools as it relates to influencer marketing any recommendations? Neal Schaffer 31:44 Yes, a social listening tools have you know, the earliest type of social media for business tool was the listening tool because social media for business began with PR. If people say bad things about us we want to know right reputation management is where all this started back in 2007 / 2008. Now listening tools can still serve that purpose and you shouldn't be listening to, if people are complaining you want to, you know, you want to proactively reach out to those people. But listening tools also give us the ability to find out who's talking about us. And if people are talking about us, and you know, this is where we get back to finding people that already have brand affinity, there may be fans as a utility, everyone's your customer, but some people like your brand more than others. So instead of listening to social listening, to find the negative, you search for the positive, and you start to make a list of people, for instance, I was at a conference right before lockdown started. And it is a pharmaceutical company that actually makes something like these, these lozenges that you take that reduce the chance of your cold going on for longer than expected and someone at the CDC here recommended that you take that as part of an effort to reduce Coronavirus. So they were sold out. They were sold out for months. But the marketing director was you know, Neal, I want to how do i do leverage this situation, I said, Look, use your social listening tool to talk about who's saying positive things about you, and start to develop those relationships. Even if you can't do any advertising. Now, you can still develop relationships over the next few months, and then activate them. When you can, you know, when you do have factory capacity, you can start talking to people. Same thing with utilities companies, who is talking about who are the who are the positive people talking about you, and start to make a list, right. And then you might notice some patterns. Some of these people have a larger following than others. Some might be specialized in food or travel. And some, you know, might be mentioning you more often than others, and therefore, they have deeper brand affinity with you. So social listening tool is really great way to begin to sort of figure out what are people saying about you from a reputation management perspective from a sentiment analysis perspective, but also who, you know, might be fans out there who might have said, Oh, my gosh, I signed up to email and now I say, 5% of my bills for the next 12 months. Did you even know the service existed? Or are you know, Hey, I just want To this event sponsored by, you know, the power company, it was really cool. Have you ever heard of it? I mean, you just never know. Right? So that's where I'd use social listening tools to really, you know, you can proactively reach out to people, like I talked about there. But when people are already talking about you, it makes it really easy to join the conversation. It makes it really easy. I was gonna say, slide into the DM to begin that conversation with them with a thank you, or we're listening. And that can make I mean, they're human right, that can make a world of difference in breaking the ice and beginning that collaborative relationship. Dan Seguin 34:32 You know, step one of effective influencer marketing starts when identifying relevant influencers for our brand. Once we embark in this adventure, how do we manage those types of relationships? Do you recommend taking a campaign based approach when working with influencers? Or is it better to test the waters with only a temporary commitment to see how they resonate with our audiences? On a related topic, what should be considered for program management and metrics? What needs to be understood from executives and influencers alike? Neal Schaffer 35:16 yeah, I'd say the first step in an influencer strategy is not you know, influencer identification, it really starts with what's the objective? What are you trying to do here? So, my voice for executives is, you know, look we're going to work with, we're going to try to find people to work with. And we are going to vet them to make sure that they're aligned with our brand, we'll, we'll contact legal to make sure they're on board. If you want to review every one of these profiles before we collaborate with them. That's great. You have the right to do it. It's it's everybody's program. You know, we're just helping the company. And we are not even going to increase spend. We're just going to take we're going to divert money from paid media to fund this and we're going to to try out, and we're going to report back to you on how we did from from a KPI perspective. And these are our objectives, you know, paid social not as effective. We want to get more word of mouth and social, we want to get more mentions. We want to get more, you know, traffic to our website, we want to create more content, and they're going to help us do that. So really what are, you know, when you asked me that second question, Daniel about, you know, what are the KPIs? What are the metrics? Well, that that is not unique to influencers. This is marketing, communications in general, what are your KPIs? If it's Media Relations, it's you know, number of number of publications, you know, number of clips, whatever it is, I mean, it's no different here. It's the same KPIs that you would have for content marketing, or for paid social media, as you have working with influencers, right. So, you know, these are the things I think you need to keep in mind. And, you know, when creating this sort of program, it is very much going to be based on one to one relationship. So I think it's totally okay to say, Hey, we're just beginning a program. We Want To make a long term program, but right now we're just, we're just sort of testing the waters. And, you know, we think you'd make a great fit. And we just want to see how we might be able to work with each other. And maybe, you know, you do start a little small, we'd like a pilot run of, you know, a few or a dozen or however many. And you have them do one action, right, whether we go back to that sponsor content, whether it is an interview, whether it is content, co-creation, I mean, whatever it is, you know, one action, and from that action, what were the results? And we have to remember that there are positive KPIs, but there's also how did it help us reduce things like reduce costs, so we use an agency to record our video. Well, you know, instead of having an executive, go to our agency's Video Studio, and record a video interview that got 10 views on YouTube over the last week, we worked with an influencer and did a live stream which they shared with their fans, and we got 1000 visitors and when we archive this on YouTube, We're probably going to get a lot more than 10 views over the course of a week. And we didn't have to pay the agency money to do this, because the influencer agreed to do it for free for exposure. So you really got to look holistically, you know, executive speak the language of Excel, right? What helped us boost things, but also, was there anything to help us reduce costs? And you'll be surprised with influencers, especially with content creation, you may find that to be the case. So, you know, yes, start small. At the end of the day, you want long term relationships. So, you know, start with one activation, one campaign and then see how it goes. And you know, some you're going to invite to the next one. Others, you may say, hey, it was great working together. We have a long term approach. We don't have any, you know, openings in our program now, but we'll definitely reach out in the future when we do and leave it at that because you don't want any burnt bridges here. These people may end up you know, increasing their influence over the course of a few months and you may want to bring them back in and test them again. Right. But that's sort of the the effort. You know, it is something I think one person can do, but it's like PR You almost need to have someone that's dedicated to really managing those relationships because it is going to take time and influencers are busy people, they're not going to return your calls right away. They're working with a lot of other entities sometimes and, and you want to be top of mind, so it's going to take time invested to work well with them. Dan Seguin 39:16 Okay, what are some of the barriers and risks to working with influencers? Does it revolve around choosing who? How to engage? And the lack of control over messaging? Neal Schaffer 39:29 Well, yeah, there's definitely lack of control of messaging. And but when you think about it, Daniel, I don't think that brands are in control of their messaging. Because at the end of the day, people are going to say what they want about the brand, and they're going to share that in social anyway. So if you realize you never had control in the first place, you can try to influence people. But once again, it's coming from a brand, not a person so and people believe people like themselves way more than they believe. advertising agencies are people that work in PR and marketing. So the writing's on the wall there. you know, we have seen some influencer campaigns that ended up sort of tarnishing the brand. And a lot of the that happened because it was transactional, please make sure you copy and paste this message at exactly this time. And you have you've had some of your influences literally copy and paste the message, including that copy and paste this message bar. And then it went out the social media, right? Or, you know, thank you xX xX for drafting me, you know, in the NBA draft and they forgot to fill in the name of the team that drafted them, right. So those are full positive happen because influencers are are treated as programmable ad units, right. And it's transactional in nature. That's not what I'm recommending you do here. So when you work long term, you don't have control, but I think it is totally okay to say hey, before you publish, we just like to have a chance to review it, and maybe offer suggestions on how to improve it. And that's your quality control that is totally okay to do. Most influencers would say sure, you know, no problem. So that would give you the ability to mitigate risk, but I think The biggest way to mitigate risks is to do it up front is choosing the right influencer to work with.