ThinkEnergy

Small-scale technologies like solar panels and on-site battery storage are empowering homeowners, businesses, and entire communities to become more energy independent. In this episode, we talk with Dick Bakker, Director of the Ottawa Renewable Energy Co-operative (OREC), about his personal switch to solar power, OREC’s role as an advocate for renewable energy, and more. Related links   Ottawa Renewable Energy Co-operative: https://www.orec.ca/ Dick’s article: https://www.orec.ca/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Vistas-Jan-2024-2pages.pdf Hydro Ottawa: https://hydroottawa.com/en To subscribe using Apple Podcasts:  https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/thinkenergy/id1465129405   To subscribe using Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7wFz7rdR8Gq3f2WOafjxpl   To subscribe on Libsyn: http://thinkenergy.libsyn.com/ --- Subscribe so you don't miss a video: YouTube   Follow along on Instagram   Stay in the know on Facebook   Keep up with the posts on X --- 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. In today's era, there is a growing desire among residents to take charge of their energy consumption not only to manage costs, but also to actively generate their own power. Traditionally, electricity has been generated at large power plants and transmitted over extensive distances to homes and businesses, leaving consumers with little influence over the source of their electricity. However, advancements in small scale technologies such as solar panels and onsite battery storage are empowering homeowners, businesses, and entire communities to become energy self-sufficient. In addition to these technologies, the integration of smart thermostats, vehicle to grid charging stations and heat pumps is further reshaping the dialogue around energy generation, conservation, and being active participants in an emission free future. Today, Canadians have the opportunity to take control of virtually every aspect of their energy consumption and interaction. The landscape of energy is evolving, putting the power back into the hands of individuals and communities alike. So here's today's big question. What role will innovative technologies and decentralized energy solutions play in shaping the future energy independence for individuals and communities? Joining us today is Dick Bakker, an Ottawa area homeowner that recently published an article about his experience installing a solar panel system on his home. Dick is also the director of an auto renewable energy cooperative, so brings a unique perspective on other small scale renewable projects his organization has been involved in. Dick, welcome to the show.   Dick Bakker  02:34 Thank you very much.   Dan Seguin  02:36 Now, you recently published an article about the process of installing solar panels on your home. What inspired you and your family to make the switch to solar power? And why did you decide to share your experience in this article,   Dick Bakker  02:52 It was a long process, I actually had to go back to 98 when the ice storm hit Eastern, Northeastern the US and Canada. At that time, I was working in the internet equipment business. And I watched the world stop and became fascinated with how it happened. And that caused a restart and an interest in energy that I had from the 70s during the oil crisis. And I found the electricity grid to be very similar to the telecom industry, then in oh three. So in 98, we were out of power here for seven days. People across the road had power, so we're okay, but we just didn't have power in our house. We just live with them. Then in Oh, three the trees in Ohio shut down North America again. And I couldn't believe that that could happen again. But at that time, Ontario was the last jurisdiction in North America to come back on stream fully. It took us almost four weeks for the whole province to come back. But Quebec was lit up okay. And they actually had bars on the hunt in the hall side looking at the lights going off in Ontario. But I asked myself why the heck is this. And I realized very quickly that it was because of our big nuclear plants. They're so big, and so rigid. The premier at the time couldn't get the citizens of Ontario to turn off their air conditioning units because of the heatwave we were in. And Quebec was unaffected. Well, why? And I learned it is the centralized nature of Ontario's power grid, and the lack of demand management that we have here. Because of that, anyway, I became fascinated with electricity regulations, and all of that. And that eventually led to me becoming part of the Ottawa renewable energy cooperative, where I learned through hard knocks the problems of the electricity system, the predatory protective regulations, and this new idea called distributed energy resources. Anyway, long and short, I finally realized that we needed to do something at home. And that came about eventually to us putting solar on the house when certain regulations changed. I wrote the article so that I could share my experiences of how the Ontario electricity system works, what we can do about it, and I wrote it for the local community newspaper, the VISTAs, I live in Alta Vista. And through my work at Oreck and my own interests in this house and making it more efficient and cheaper to run, I learned an awful lot and that information should be spread, I thought, okay, Dick,   Dan Seguin  05:24 In your article, you mentioned the challenges you and your neighbors face during the durational storm that hit Ottawa in 2022. And the tornado in 2018. How did these experiences influence your decision to invest in solar and other distributed energy resources specifically?   Dick Bakker  05:46 Well, specific? A lot. They were instrumental. So I've lived in this house for 30 years and Alta Vista, we've been out of power for longer than five days, four times. In the 98 ice storm, the 2003 trees in Ohio that fell over and shut down North America, 2018 Tornado, and the 2022 Derecho. And then there was also another big ice storm in the spring of 23. But we'll leave that aside, it didn't affect us too much. So after the 2022 Derecho, my neighbor and I were discussing what had happened, were both out for 10 days, and he was beside himself because he didn't have anywhere to go. They want to get off the grid completely. And he knew I was involved in the Ottawa, renewable energy cooperative, or Rec. And I told him, You can't go off grid because it's not worthwhile. It's not effective, you're getting a subsidized price of electricity, which didn't, he didn't like hearing that. But I said, you're just we're just not paying enough for our electricity. We're getting it so cheap, it doesn't make sense to put solar on your roof. Besides, we both had trees in our cell site. So that was then I explained to him the centralized nature of the grid. 60% of our power comes from three nuclear sites. Bruce Darlington and Pickering. Pickering being 14%. The pension funds like to invest in big centralized power plants, big shiny objects that the world can see. And the long lines that bring the power from way over there to our little corner is like a cash stream that the incumbents want to keep. They're not interested in distributed energy resources, or D are spread around. But that's where we should be going that time in 2022. Knowing what I knew of the regulations and the orientation of the provincial government, I couldn't see ever having the potential to put solar on your house. Sorry, I couldn't see the financial justification of putting solar on the house. And on top of that, the present government is subsidizing our electricity bills to the tune of 7 billion a year five and a half billion of that is going to general subsidies to the middle class and upper class not targeted to the poor. So at some point that's going to rise. The rating agencies will correct that by threatening to downgrade Ontario's credit rating but all that to say it's still subsidized, so it's not worth putting it on. Then in 2023, January, the Ontario government came out with some changes and started encouraging net metering and local generation.   Dan Seguin  08:28 Okay, now, did you also discuss the changing landscape of Ontario's electricity rules, specifically mentioning the Ontario Energy Boards directive in 2023? What changed that, in your opinion, helped to facilitate the adoption of solar power and what challenges still exist for homeowners today?   Dick Bakker  08:51 Thanks, Dan. That directive from the Ontario Energy Board and 23 was was a game changer for the province. I don't think they realize what potential they unleash them. So from 2018 When the Conservative government took power, they had a big grid only mentality. They wanted big power plants and long lines to deliver the power to the homes and the rules around net metering, which is the only way you can put solar on your house and stay connected to the grid. That's where you generate power, consume it yourself, and trade credits for your over summer for your summer overproduction for your winter consumption or purchases from the grid. So that pricing scheme was basically rigged against the homeowner because homeowners were forced to go to the tiered pricing scheme. So just on that situation, and up until 2023. Net metering wasn't very cost effective because of the pricing, but it could work. Technically, the grid acts as a battery so you're never out of power. So that rule kept me way from thinking of solar on my house. Also, I had trees to the south of the house. So the best place to put the solar panels wouldn't be productive. I don't want to cut the trees down, because that keeps my air conditioning costs low, and they're nice. But then in 23, the province changed the rules around net metering, and came up with an ultra low overnight rate. So the key thing about net metering, they said the local distribution companies would have to give the net metering customer the option to pick their rate class. So you go to a time of use rate if you wish. And then you get value for your time value of electricity. So if you're producing an high rate, you get the high rate in your credits. Okay, so that's good, then they came up with an ultra low overnight time of use rate, third rate class to encourage every user to charge at night, not during the evening dinnertime when everybody's turning on lights and eaters and all their devices. So they want to reduce consumption during the peak hour, and increase consumption at the low hour. And if you produce solar during the four to 9pm, period at 28 cents, that's what you pay, you get credits for 28 cents, that is much better economics for the homeowner, the end user and the solar producer. That's when I realized that my house was actually ideal because I've got a very low sloped roof. The South Side is full of trees, but the north side is clear. And the North side's going to produce more during the four to eight o'clock pm in the summertime at 28 cents. So one hour of that can offset 10 hours at the 2.8 cents for the low rate. So that was one thing. The other thing is I have an EV. We have heat pumps. We just installed a heat pump water heater, so I can time shift my consumption to the low overnight rate, I think it's pretty good. I still think the cost of electricity is going to rise more. So my return on investment is only going to improve because putting all of this in is an insurance policy against that rising cost of electricity. You also asked what are the continuing challenges? The challenges for solar? on the residential side are buildings and trees. How's the building built? Which way are the roofs pointing? Where are the trees? What kind of shading do they throw? But the good thing is that in the summertime, the sun is very high in Canada, so the sun will come straight down more or less. And in the wintertime when there's no snow on your roof. Or even if there's a little bit of snow on the roof. Solar production is marginally better because it's cold. So the physics is better. So there's still lots of opportunity for solar even in this cold northern climate. The challenges are of course buildings and trees to a certain point the supply chain there aren't enough installers, electricians to do all the work that should be done can be done hydro Ottawa, a staff just to get the installations done the upgrades for the grid. But hydro Ottawa needs Ottawa residents to spend this money on their own Diyar so that you can meet your new targets for the year. So I think people who do this on their own are doing it for themselves, but indirectly they're doing it for the betterment of the overall grid, driving down the cost of electricity. Solar does not drive up the cost of electricity when producing nuclear plants drives up the cost of electricity. Okay.   Dan Seguin  13:40 Could you maybe provide more details on the cost and capacity of your solar panel system? What were the economic aspects of your investment, including any government incentives or rebates that may have influenced your decision?   Dick Bakker  13:56 So in my specific installation, I have 37 panels in total. 24 of them are on the north slope and 13 panels on the south slope. So total DC kilowatt of 14.43. That's going through a nine kilowatt inverter. I have no panels on the south slope because there are three big trees there. If I had panels there, it would probably be a third smaller for the same generation. So over 12 months, I expect to generate about 10,246 kilowatt hours. That's 78% of 2020 two's consumption and my electricity consumption includes 90% of our driving because I have an Eevee and a plug in hybrid Evie 90% of our driving 100% of our cooling 40% of our heating a little more than 40% this year because it's a warm winter and 100% of our lights and appliances. So I've got a gas station on my roof and I've got a furnace on my roof effectively because of the ultra low overnight time of use rate. I am confident that with time shifting I can cover 100% of my electricity purchases, not my connection charges 100% of my electricity cost with something like 78% of my electricity kilowatts, because of the time shifting between ultra low and peak rate, the overall cost was $30,478 for the equipment, plus HST electricity upgrade to 200 amp service, some internal wiring changes, and I reached angled under the panels on the north and east, I didn't do the South because it doesn't quite need it effectively, I future proof my house for 30 plus years of electricity, I've given myself 30 years plus of electricity, price insurance and forced savings. And I predict that the credit rating agencies at some point will force the province to reduce the subsidies we're giving to the middle and the upper class and electricity costs. And that'll drive up the electricity rates a little bit, not massively, and I'll be protected from that. or whoever's living here because I'm getting old. So I think the house value of homes that have solar are going to hold their value better than a new kitchen cabinet or a new, new whatever that the new owner pulls out and replaces, you know, you're not going to be replacing solar on a roof if it's reducing your utility bills.   Dan Seguin  16:23 Okay, now our batteries, shifting your energy use away from daytime usage, or other distributed energy resources a consideration?   Dick Bakker  16:33 Well, that's a very good question, because the one thing I haven't done in the house yet is put a battery and a disconnect Island. And that's the next thing I'm going to look at during the summertime, I do these things one at a time to make sure they work and see how they operate. So the next thing will be a battery probably in the garage, if it's appropriate. And the not sure the proper technical term islanding device to allow me to operate separate from the grid. And if I ever buy another car, it'll be an Eevee with to a charging, so that I'll be able to charge my house and the battery over the course of the year, so the battery will be there for a disaster. But over the course of the year, I'll be able to draw power from the solar on the roof, and from the grid at the low rate stored and discharge it to the grid during the peak rate. So that makes my neighbor's grid a little more resilient. And in a crisis, I can be Island as opposed to the noisy gas generators that are sitting around my neighborhood.   Dan Seguin  17:37 Shifting gears a bit now as the director of the auto renewable energy cooperatives since its creation in 2009. Can you share how it works? And what are some of the projects that your coop has built?   Dick Bakker  17:54 Sure, certainly. So OREC is a for profit, renewable energy Co Op that enables residents of Ottawa to be restricted to Ontario by certain rules that I won't get into. So it allows residents of Ottawa and mostly Eastern Ontario but Ontario to benefit from distributed energy resources in their own region, we build our own renewable energy generation. Presently, solar and wind, energy conservation assets, commercial building, lighting installation, retrofit projects that keep the electrons jobs and profits local. So we have 22 solar systems in place now, most of them or the feed in tariff contracts. Three of them are net metering projects, one at the Museum of Science and Tech, two at the French Catholic High School Board, Mere Blue and Paul Desmarais. And then 18 other feed in tariff contracts where we have a contract to sell the power to the grid. At a net metering project. We sell the power to the building. Then we also have two wind projects down in southwestern Ontario and three energy retrofit projects. We had five but two of them have finished their contractor. So the solar projects are on housing coops, burns, schools, museums, factories, and two of them are I'd say medium sized ground mounts, 500 kilowatt ground mounts, the two wind projects. One is a 2.3 megawatt project at Tiverton, just outside of the Bruce nuclear plant and a little funny story I like to tell everyone is that the Bruce nuclear plant doesn't supply power to the neighborhood. All the electricity from Bruce nuclear goes to Toronto on the transmission lines because they connect it to the distribution grid and Temperton that blows all the light bulbs so they feed Toronto and then it trickles all the way back to Tim Burton. The wind project that we have outside of Tim Burton is a standalone turbine and it feeds the distribution grid. So should heaven forbid should Bruce nuclear go down? Some of the people will have electricity coming from our wind turbine. The people that are working at Bruce nuclear will have power at home, not because of the nuclear plant. The second wind turbine is an 800 kilowatt project in Zurich directly south of there. That's a wonderful area for wind. Most of the wind projects in that area are large projects owned by American pension funds, feeding Toronto, all of the power is going on the transmission lines. So getting back to Oh, Rick in general. So we have solar wind and lighting retrofits at the IRA center, condo, and housing coops. All of our projects are revenue generating with proven technologies and solid counterparties. So pretty comfortable with the security of those assets. The board is made up of pretty experienced people, engineers, lawyers, business development, accountants comms people. I'm a bit of a generalist. But I have worked in telecom and technical fields my whole life, not as an engineer, we have 980 members, 500 of them, about half of them have invested over $11 million in equity and debt in our project since we started. And we've paid dividends every year since 2013. When our first project came online, we had repaid to our members over 3.5 million in dividends, interest and capital repayment with very little outside debt, we'd rather pair members than banks, no offense banks, but we want to keep the money within the family within the community. Our main function is to act as an investment cooperative for our members. So we spend most of our time looking for projects to build and or buy, and then raise the community capital to build, operate, repeat, get more projects, raise more capital, pay out the dividends and capital. But we do have to spend an awful lot of money on advocacy work to change the regulations, or maintain whatever regulations are, to promote distributed energy resources of all types. But the second core function that we want to do more of is utilize the knowledge of our 1000 members and create them. It's happening already organically, but we want to have more regular information sessions between our members who are doing things like I just did. We have the largest concentration of any 1000 People in the Ottawa Valley in the province. I think of people who have D er installed in their homes. So we have a lot of end users, battery users, people with knowledge of heat pumps and stuff like that. So we are a group of friends with knowledge of the ER.   Dan Seguin  22:34 Okay now, Dick, when did things really take off with the co-op? And are members seeing dividends?   Dick Bakker  22:42 Well, that's a good question. Because the first offering that we raised was in 2012. And we didn't know how it was going to go, it actually went better than we expected, our minimum requirement was to raise half a million dollars. And in those nine weeks that we had, we raised $970,000, and more cash than we actually needed for what we had to do. And ever since then, we've we're now on our 10th Raise, each raise has gone better than expected. We've always raised more cash than we had projects at that time. So for a period there, we were building up too much cash and didn't have enough projects for them. So projects come more harder than the money or the members, the membership has grown very well. And the equity in the cooperative has been very good. And I'm also proud to say that we've paid dividends every year, since 2013. In the last couple of years, it's been 4%. We'd like it to be higher, but we've had to build everything from scratch without any outside cash. We've just started our latest raise, it's going to close on August 28, I believe. And we're looking for new members with new equity, and that equity can be RRSP or TFSA. It's an investment in the portfolio of 27 existing projects, and the new projects that we're going to be building in the coming year.   Dan Seguin  24:11 Now, let's talk about the changing relationship between electricity consumers and producers. How do you see this evolving in the coming years? And what role do you think individuals and communities will play in the broader energy transition?   Dick Bakker  24:32 This is going to be the biggest change in our society in the coming years. I think we're going to move from being ratepayers with very little agency beyond paying our bills and turning off lights to prosumers or producer consumers who have the ability to produce electricity for conservation, which is what I'm doing or for profit and or for profit when the regulations in Ontario Are you allow hydro Ottawa to buy excess power from homeowners? Right now you can't. So we'll be able to conserve and profit from our assets on our roof. And we'll also be able to actively manage our consumption, again for conservation and profit. So right now we're able to reduce our demand and shift our demand from peak load to low load. But in the future, I'm pretty sure that Ontario will follow California and New York and allow for aggressive demand response programs. And what we'd like to do at some point in the future, as OREC is allow our members to pool their batteries and solar panels and air conditioners, so that we can turn down consumption as the grid gets choked or or constrained. So we just saw what happened in Alberta, they had no demand management program, they turned down some gas plants for renovation in the peak of winter, and then they got hit with a big demand. During a cold period. The only way they got out of their problem was begging their customers to turn down their home heating systems. The citizens responded, but the downtown office towers left their lights on all night. That's absurd. So going forward, I think that the LDCs will be paying people to turn down their demand, because we need the grid to be balanced. We don't need excess generation or excess demand or under demand, we need everything balanced. So a megawatt is as good as a megawatt.   Dan Seguin  26:52 Okay, thank you for that, in your opinion now. What is the city or province doing well, and what improvements need to be made? Now you gotta behave?   Dick Bakker  27:04 I'll try to behave. How long do we have? I don't want to rant. But it's hard not to. On the city site. If there's a climate emergency act like there is one, people should not be buying coffee from an idling car. Housing is energy, stopping natural gas expansion. The Better Homes program is a wonderful program of the city. Because it addresses the upfront costs of retrofitting and DTR and solar and all those things. It ties that cost to a 20 year loan fixed to the House tax bill, not to the person. I'm 68. I may not be in this house for 10 years, I tend to be here longer, but my intention and reality may be different. So we need to have the cost of long term assets spread over years. The Better Homes program says that the city should be encouraging solar and small wind for resilience purposes. Every large group should have solar and there should be wind turbines scattered throughout Eastern Ontario, not just in rural areas in batches of 50. There should be a couple of wind turbines in urban Ottawa with the proper setbacks. That's the city in the province. Every month Ontario's paying out $1.3 billion in gasoline and diesel costs. There's lots of money for the energy transition. You just have to shift it around. Let the nuclear plants run their course, don't shut them down early, but don't pour money down a sinkhole. We just announced today Pickering expansion, well Pickering retrofit, it's the oldest nuclear plant in North America. The province is in a pickle because they know the nukes will be late. The small modular reactors aren't small modular. They are big reactors, they can only go on the transmission lines. That demand is all over the province at the end of the distribution lines where we live and work and EVs and heat pumps are so just let the nuclear plants slow down or wear out. The Donsky Report to the Independent Electricity systems operator said the lowest cost of new energy in the provinces D er of all types. It's just regulations that are stopping it and it makes the province more resilient. So the province can have every city have a similar program to Otto as the Better Homes program. Secondly, remove the Ontario electricity rebate that's putting $5.5 million dollars of taxpayer money into the pockets of people who leave their lights on and put that money instead in the distribution lines allow every kind of virtual net metering in the province especially community solar gardens so that citizens could own the solar on a swimming pool hockey rink. Any facility that is used for a disaster recovery facility should be generating power day to day and then have the ability to island in a crisis and resilience See should be the first order of the electricity grid, proper costs but resiliency and localized and generally liberalize the rules around generation and distribution. Okay,   Dan Seguin  30:10 Does the co-op or its members have an objective to promote or advocate for renewable energy and distributed energy resources in the community or with local governments? Yes,   Dick Bakker  30:23 In every way, as a co op, and with other coops for community scale projects, 100 kilowatt to one or two megawatt is the size of projects that is natural for us. That's the kind of thing that citizens are going to be interested in and seeing and owning, but we are going to work in the bigger projects on the transmission side, but we're advocating for that all the time, spend a lot more time helping our members to act as individuals with information and examples, the whole idea of friends with knowledge to get them to put in their own home systems. So yes, we spend way too much time advocating on behalf of the ER.   Dan Seguin  31:03 Okay, now, are you seeing your co-op's focus areas reflected in government policy, either municipally or provincially? How do you ensure your voices are heard?   Dick Bakker  31:17 We're starting to see a focus on D er, but I'm not yet seeing action, hard, hard action on the ER except for a few exceptions. Hydro Ottawa with the IESO is right now focused on solar DERs as a conservation measure, there's a bunch of regulations around it. I won't get into that right now. So that's good. And the dusky report and the ultra low time of use rate, those are all very good things. But today, they've just announced the massive expenditure on Pickering, which locks us further into the centralized focus of the province. The orientation of all electricity grids is to build big things far away that will break at some point. We're here in Ottawa, and we see all these federal buildings, there's only a few of them that have sold on them. The federal government doesn't do a good job of buying from small organizations like us. So we've had lots of discussions with the feds, but they want to do massive things that the reporters can write about. We're advocating as ourselves and with other coops nationally and provincially in every province, because that's where electricity and Co Op law resides. And we have formed a national association called the Community Energy cooperatives Canada, which is based in Saskatoon right now and has 25 coops from across the country. The fastest growing area of renewable energy coops in Canada is Alberta because they have the most liberalized power grid. So that'll be our national voice. But it'll be a voice at the federal and more importantly, at the provincial level, because that's where electricity lives. We work a lot with the European res Co Op, who have been very successful in Europe to get the EU to pass a directive that says every citizen of the EU has the right to own, operate, store, share, and save their own renewable electricity. So if we get the federal government to encourage that, all they can do is bribe, encourage and embarrass the provinces. If we could get the federal government to pass a directive like that. That's EU directive 2018 -201. If anybody's interested, we get that kind of directive from the federal government. That'll put pressure and embarrassment on the provinces to loosen up their grids. Alberta and Nova Scotia have moved the furthest along in this area, Ontario and Quebec and Manitoba and Saskatchewan are the big laggards but we have to move that way and oh wreck with our friends in the other coops can push that. We're all voters. We're all voting with our money and our ballots, and the last thing, banks will notice the difference.   Dan Seguin  34:03 Lastly, Dick, we always end our interviews with some rapid fire questions.Are you ready?   Dick Bakker  34:12 Yes, sir.   Dan Seguin  34:13 Okay, what are you reading right now?   Dick Bakker  34:16 Well, two books, one is called treeing energy by Bill Nussey. It's all about the wonderful economics of Home DER technologies. And the other is by my favorite author Guy Vanderhaeghe, August Into Winter. And not a book but fascinating about Saskatchewan and rural Saskatchewan and Manitoba crime scene set in 39. With the Spanish Civil War in the coming world war two is the backdrop. It's great.   Dan Seguin  34:44 What would you name your boat if you had one? Or do you have one?   Dick Bakker  34:47 There ain't no easy road. Those are the words of a song I love called Jericho by Fred Eagle Smith. My wife gave me a paddle with this phrase on it a few years ago as a birthday present.   Dan Seguin  34:59 Next, who is someone that you admire?   Dick Bakker  35:01 Peggy my, my wife, mother of my children, business partner, best friend and a no BS problem solver.   Dan Seguin  35:09 Okay? What was the closest thing to real magic that you've witnessed   Dick Bakker  35:15 Birth of a child who grows into an adult who has a child. Now,   Dan Seguin  35:19 Now, as a result of the pandemic? Many of us are guilty of watching a little too much TV or movies. What is your favorite movie or show? What are you watching right now?   Dick Bakker  35:31 I'd have to say the Danish movie Borgan. It's a Danish TV series on politics and the trade offs and the personalities that shows the human side of difficult decision making. It's great.   Dan Seguin  35:46 Lastly, what is exciting you about your industry right now?   Dick Bakker  35:51 Well, the electricity industry has got the possibility to democratize energy to revitalize communities and especially rural communities. So with renewables and DDR and cooperatives, we can keep the electrons' jobs and profits local. Okay,   Dan Seguin  36:10 Dick, our listeners, if they want to learn more about you, how do they connect?   Dick Bakker  36:15 Probably the best way is to go online and check. www.orec.ca or orec website.   Dan Seguin  36:24 This is it. We've reached the end of another episode of The thinkenergy podcast. Thank you so much for joining me today. I hope you had a lot of fun. Cheers.   Dick Bakker  36:33 I did. Thank you very much, Dan. It's wonderful.   Dan Seguin  36:37 Thanks for tuning in for another episode of the thinkenergy podcast. Don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review wherever you're listening. And to find out more about today's guests or previous episodes, visit thinkenergypodcast.com I hope you'll join us again next time as we spark even more conversations about the energy of tomorrow.  

We’ve spoken with many experts about electric vehicles (EVs) in Canada, covering everything from adoption trends to announcements, projects, and policies. This episode curates some of the most informative takeaways from these discussions. Envision Canada’s EV future with Daniel Breton of Electric Mobility Canada, Emma Jarratt of Electric Autonomy Canada, Cara Clairman of Plug’nDrive, and Loren McDonald of EVAdoption. Related links   Daniel Breton on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-breton-b8a3b1a4/ Electric Mobility Canada: http://https://emc-mec.ca Emma Jarratt on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/emma-jarratt-ba552727/ Electric Autonomy Canada: https://electricautonomy.ca/ Cara Clairman on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cara-clairman-84967318/ Plug’nDrive: http://www.plugndrive.ca Loren McDonald on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lorenmcdonald/ EVAdoption: http://www.https://evadoption.com Hydro Ottawa: https://hydroottawa.com/en To subscribe using Apple Podcasts:  https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/thinkenergy/id1465129405   To subscribe using Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7wFz7rdR8Gq3f2WOafjxpl   To subscribe on Libsyn: http://thinkenergy.libsyn.com/ --- Subscribe so you don't miss a video: https://www.youtube.com/user/hydroottawalimited   Follow along on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hydroottawa   Stay in the know on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HydroOttawa   Keep up with the posts on X: https://twitter.com/thinkenergypod ---------------- Transcript: 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. In today's podcast episode will focus on some of the most impactful conversations we had about electric vehicles EVs and Canada's mandate to make all light duty vehicles and passenger truck sales 100% zero emission by 2035. Interim electric vehicle targets include 20% of all vehicle sales by 2026 and 60% by 2030. If the stats are any indication, Canadians are getting on board according to s&p global, the share of the new registration of light duty zero emission vehicles in Canada in the third quarter of 2023 reached 13.3%, or one in eight new vehicles. This is up by 40% from the third quarter in 2022. There is no doubt that the federal government believes that zero emission vehicles are part of the solution to a stronger economy, cleaner air and healthier environment and good jobs. To facilitate this. We've all read about the factory announcements in 2023 that will develop a homegrown electric vehicle supply chain. There's Volkswagens 20 billion Ontario battery factory for turning its Oakville auto assembly plant into a 1.8 billion EV industrial park. There's the auto supplier Magna investing half a billion dollars into the EV supply chain right here in Ontario and Sweden's Northolt. Building a multimillion-dollar EV battery plant in Quebec. In today's episode, we're going to revisit some of the EV experts we've talked to on the show over the last couple of years and pull out the best nuggets of wisdom to share with you today. Our first highlight is with Daniel Breton from Electric Mobility Canada about what has spurred EV adoptions and the expected overall benefits to Canadians. What's been the most significant event innovation or policy that you think has changed the future trajectory for mass EV adoption for the better?   Daniel Breton  02:55 Well, I think there's not one thing in particular, you know, that has made it possible, I would say that's a growing, or it's a number of things. So obviously, battery technology has evolved quickly, over the past 1015-20 years. Just to give you an example, between 2008 to 2020. Volume density of the battery has grown eight-fold. So, when you look at batteries today you can have a lot more capacity. And a battery now than you had five years ago, 10 years ago, and it's going to keep growing as time goes by a lot of people seem to think that if you have let's say, a 60-kilowatt hour battery, it's going to be four times the size than a 15-kilowatt hour battery from let's say 2010. Actually, it's not the case at all. It's just that it has more capacity, and smaller volume per kilowatt hour, meaning that actually weight has not increased as fast as capacity. So, to me, that's very important. The other thing is that infrastructure, infrastructure deployment and infrastructure evolution has made a big difference. Just to give you an example. 10 years ago, the average electric car had 120 kilometers of range. Now it's 450. So, in 10 years, it's quadrupled. At the same time, 10 years ago, if you wanted to charge your electric car, there were hardly any fast chargers on the road. So, for example, when I was working in Montreal that I had to go to the National Assembly, I could not buy an electric car, I had to buy a plug-in hybrid electric car, because there was no fast charger but between Montreal and Quebec, that's 10 years ago. Now, if you go five years ago, a fast charger had a 50-kilowatt charger So that meant that we went from charging 120 kilometers of range in about four or five hours to charging 120 kilometers of range in about half an hour. And now with new fast chargers, you know, you know, going from 50 kilowatt to 150-kilowatt, 250 kilowatt and even 350 kilowatts, you can charge 120 kilometers of range in 10 minutes. So, things have accelerated regarding the technology of infrastructures as well. Education is making a big difference because more and more people are interested in EVs. There's still a lot of work that needs to be done. I'm often surprised to hear the same questions I was being asked 5-10-15-20 years ago regarding battery life, for instance. But I still do get those questions on social media and even sometimes on regular media.   Dan Seguin  06:03 I've got a follow up question here for you. What are some of the overall benefits as a nation when we reach 100% EV passenger sales by 2030, and all other vehicles by 2040?   Daniel Breton  06:18 Well, I would say that the first benefit is lower emissions is going to make a hell of a difference. Because you know, a lot of people say that GHG emissions from transportation represent 24% of Canada's total GHG emissions. But that's only downstream emissions. When you add upstream emissions, it's 30%, meaning that transportation is the number one source of GHG emissions in Canada. But that's huge emissions, so lowering them by I would say 50 to 80%, because you have to keep in mind that you have GHG emissions from electricity production, although it's getting much better. I mean, the last coal plant is going to close next year in Alberta. And, Nova Scotia intends to go. I think it's 80% renewable by 2030. So as time goes by, electric vehicles become cleaner and cleaner because the grid is becoming clearer and cleaner. So that's one thing. But the other thing, which is super important, and people seem to forget, is that according to Health Canada, they released a report on the impact of air pollution last year, the economic cost of air pollution is estimated at $120 billion, not millions, billions 100 $20 billion from air pollution, and that's 15,300 premature deaths, which is eight times the death toll of car accidents. So,­­ if we bring more electric vehicles on the road, it's going to significantly lower air pollution, whether it's from light duty vehicles, or medium or heavy duty vehicles. So it's going to save billions of dollars to Canadians, help our healthcare system and save 1000s of lives. I mean, this is not insignificant. This is very important. And this is something I think that needs to be said. And last but not least jobs. I've been talking about this, believe it or not, I've been coming to the House of Commons because from where I am, I can see the House of Commons right here because I'm in debt note this morning. I started to talk about the EV industry about 15 or 16 years ago to the federal government saying that we need to transition our automotive sector from gas to electric because that's where the industry is going. So, there was really not much of any interest for years. But now the federal government has really caught on, I have to salute Minister Chabang for his leadership on this particular issue to make sure to attract EV assembly, battery assembly, battery manufacturing, critical minerals strategy. So, we are seeing a real shift. I mean, you have to keep in mind that between 2020 and 2020 light duty vehicle production in Canada has been going down and down and down time and time again. We went from being the fourth biggest manufacturer in the world to not even be at the top 10 in 2020. Now because the federal government, the Ontario government, the Quebec government and other Canadian governments are investing more and more on the EV supply chain in the EV industry. We are seeing a revival of the automotive sector in Ontario. And to me this is significant. And if we hadn't done this, there will not be an automotive sector by 2030 or 22. 35 So this is huge.   Dan Seguin  10:02 On this topic of investments. I had the pleasure of speaking with Emma Jarrett, the Executive Editor of Electric Autonomy Canada. She's extensively covered Canada's grown EV manufacturing, infrastructure and battery sectors. Here's what Emma had to say on the topic. There's been a lot of news and announcements made recently. Can you talk about what stands out for you as the most notable electric vehicle projects or initiatives currently underway in Canada that you're excited about? And maybe why?   Emma Jarrett  10:37 Sure. So, I think everyone stops and takes an extra pause, when you hear there's a factory worth billions and billions of dollars going in. And that's, you know, maybe the third or fourth announcement of that type you've heard in a few months, it's really quite remarkable. The industry that's been attracted by the new investments that are coming into Canada, it's almost unprecedented. So, to see that play out, in real time to get to cover it, you know, it's a privilege. It's very interesting for me, I learn a lot every single day. And I think that, you know, the bird's eye view of the situation is that this is a real moment. And in our history, we're building a supply chain in this country that we've never had before. And it's going to be very interesting when we're looking back on it to see what kind of a fork in the road it represents for Canada that we seize this opportunity. What I'm most excited about with the announcements is the supply chain as a whole and decarbonizing that. So, it's great that we have factories that make batteries. But it would be better if they were all powered by non-emitting electricity. And it would be fantastic if the trucks that brought the refined minerals to those factories to go into the batteries were zero emission trucks, and the mining vehicles that pulled the minerals out of the ground. Were all electric. That to me is the big piece of this, you know, the whole supply chain needs to be decarbonized.   Dan Seguin  12:06 Okay, Emma, at the 2023 Federal Budget announced billions of tax credits and financing to attract investments in manufacturing, energy and tech sectors. Can you unpack some of the highlights that stood out for you in the budget as it relates to electric mobility or maybe clean energy?   Emma Jarrett  12:26 Sure. So, the big question with this year's budget was, how is it going to respond to the United States inflation Reduction Act, which was, you know, a $369 billion omnibus bill? And, you know, is it is going to squash Canada flat, we just don't have that kind of economic power at that scale. So, when the budget came out this year, I think everyone was very surprised and tentatively impressed if, if it rolls out the way some of the politicians are saying it will, that for the EV industry, and the clean tech, you know, you can, we can go toe to toe with the US using $55 billion, which is, you know, less than a quarter than what the US is, is spending. So that was just interesting. And I don't know enough about economic gymnastics to be able to say one way or the other if this is going to be a success, but it's an interesting strategy. And I look forward to seeing how it plays out. Aside from the IRA maneuvers, I was really pleased to see a new tax credit come up for decarbonization of Canada's grids $25.7 billion in tax credits to move towards sustainable, renewable, in most cases, sources of energy. And as an extension of that also smart peak management, you know, with battery storage and better load prediction and understanding. I think that's really important.   Dan Seguin  14:00 Now your coverage and knowledge of the electric mobility industry is extensive. What are your thoughts on where Canada stands on its road to meet the 2035 targets?   Emma Jarrett  14:14 We have a very long way to go. I don't think we can pretend otherwise. The steps that are being taken are encouraging. But this is a really, really big shift to turn. I think the targets are possible to meet. I don't think they were unreasonable or pie in the sky. I really do think that it is achievable whether or not it happens who can say, I hope so. And I think that whenever I hear somebody saying, you know, being pushed too fast, or they're naysaying the targets, I go, okay, fair, but can you tell me what you think the alternative is to not meeting them? We're looking at a pretty stark future environmentally if action is not taken, and I am was of the opinion that some action is better than sitting there and doing nothing.   Dan Seguin  15:03 I couldn't agree more with Emma. Okay, moving on. In this next clip, I speak to Cara Clairman, President and CEO of Plug'n'Drive, who shared her perspective on the barriers that still exist to consumers, choosing EVs and the role municipalities play in moving this needle. Here's what Cara had to say when I asked what the main barriers are to EV ownership.   Cara Clairman  15:36 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 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 EVs were too expensive. And so, we know that the upfront sticker price 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 electric vehicles income, and you can even compare an EV 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  17:29 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  17:46 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 in their territory and that will ensure that the you know roughing 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 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 that don't have to reinvent the wheel.   Dan Seguin  19:10 No need to reinvent the wheel. I love this good pun. Now. Last, but certainly not least, is my interview with the EV evangelist himself, Loren McDonnell of EV Adoption. Loren has spent decades analyzing trends in EVs and charging technology. He joined me on the show to share his thoughts and had some surprising and insightful things to say. What has been the most important or significant recent event in your opinion, that will positively change the future for electric vehicles?   Loren McDonald  19:50 I would say there's sort of two things that are kind of closely connected. One is the Ford F 150 Lightning, as you as you both probably know, you know, and pickups are pretty popular and candidate as well. But you know, the F 150, the regular F 150 internal combustion engine has been the top selling vehicle, not just pickup, but the top selling vehicle of any type in America, and actually the world for 40 straight years. And so the fact that this sort of mainstream popular vehicle, a pickup truck is actually and it's being delivered. Now the first deliveries are starting, like this week of the electric version is, I've called it this the game changer, the single most important EV in history, right? And you could make arguments for lots of different ones for different reasons, right. But I think, to go mainstream, this signals to those people in the Midwest as an example. Oh, I guess this isn't just for wealthy, you know, granola eating people in California. This is a work truck, this is, you know, this is actually acceptable. And the second part of it, obviously, which you know, we'll talk a bit about more later, I'm sure your the bi directional charging capability is sort of an eye opener. And then the last thing I would say is just sort of gas prices, right. And so, gas prices, again, which I know we'll talk about some more, may make people more aware of alternatives to the internal combustion engine. And so EVs are kind of having their moment right now, because of that.   Dan Seguin  21:41 Okay. Now, time to leave it all on the floor. What is something you want the average combustion engine car owner to know about EVs, that maybe they don't already know, Loren gloves off, go for it.   Loren McDonald  21:59 Really, I think pretty, pretty simple that charging your electric vehicle is more like having to charge a smartphone than how you feel your gas car. Right. And just to expand briefly on that is, you know, get most consumers there, their perception is that refueling and recharging an EV is the same as going to a centralized gas station and stuff. And it's not till you own one, and experience it and drive it a lot that you realize, no, it's actually more like a smartphone where you know, you, you know, put it in your bed stand and plug it in, you wake up in the morning, and it's recharged or whatever. And that's the same thing with your EV. Assuming you have access to home charging, right? Go into the garage plugin, wake up and it's charged. And, you know, the, the, the nuance to that is, is that and I've got this amazing chart that I that I use in presentations that shows like a fuel gauge, for you know, like most consumers, when they drive a gas car, what do they do, they drive the car down to empty quarter of a tank, below empty, whatever they're comfortable with. And then they pull into a gas station and fill it up to fall. And you know, this, Dan, that's not how you refuel an electric vehicle, you replenish what you use, right? So, if you drive 30 miles today, you plug in and you replenish that third, and maybe actually even don't, maybe you wait a couple of days, right? You drive it down, and then you do it right, it sort of depends on your comfort zone. The only time through refueling experience for an EV is analogous to a gas car is when you go on those road trips, right? And those either so you know, weekend one or a long road trip, and then you do have to do that centralized thing. But otherwise, I think this is the single biggest educational hurdle that we have because it's not something you can explain to people. They actually have to like the experience to then the light bulb goes, Oh, yeah, this is like my smartphone.   Dan Seguin  24:12 And there you have it. Wise words from our guest, Loren McDonnell, the EV evangelists. Sometimes changing our mindset can help make you see things in a new light. And that's our show for today. If you like what you heard, feel free to revisit the full episodes featuring our renowned EV experts. We'll include links in the show notes so you can find these episodes and guests you're most interested in. And of course, don't forget to subscribe. Again. Thank you for joining me today as this sector and topic continues to evolve and grow. I for one, as a longtime EV owner, I am excited to see what the near future holds for Canada and for consumers. Until next time, thank you for listening to thinkenergy podcast. Thanks for tuning in for another episode of the think energy podcast. Don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review wherever you're listening. And to find out more about today's guests or previous episodes, visit thinkenergypodcast.com I hope you will join us again next time as we spark even more conversations about the energy of tomorrow.  

Waterpower is Canada’s most abundant renewable resource, providing 60 per cent of our electricity. But here’s the big question: as Canada looks to an emissions-free future, how can waterpower, one of the oldest power sources on the planet, help us get there? And what do we need to consider? To learn more about our hydroelectric future, we sat down with Gilbert Bennett, President and CEO of WaterPower Canada. Tune in.   Related links   Gilbert Bennett on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gilbert-bennett-86166529/ WaterPower Canada: https://waterpowercanada.ca/  Hydro Ottawa: https://hydroottawa.com/en To subscribe using Apple Podcasts:  https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/thinkenergy/id1465129405   To subscribe using Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7wFz7rdR8Gq3f2WOafjxpl   To subscribe on Libsyn: http://thinkenergy.libsyn.com/ --- Subscribe so you don't miss a video on YouTube   Follow along on Instagram   Stay in the know on Facebook   Keep up with the posts on X (Formerly Twitter) --- Transcript: Dan Seguin  00:06 This is thinkenergy, the podcast that helps you better understand the fast-changing world of energy through conversations with game changers, industry leaders, and influencers. So, join me, Dan Seguin, as I explore both traditional and unconventional facets of the energy industry. Hey everyone, Happy New Year and welcome back. Here's a fun fact. Canada's electricity sector is one of the cleanest in the world when it comes to greenhouse gas emissions. Now today, we're going to focus on one of the oldest power sources on the planet. Hydropower generates power when flowing water spins a wheel or turbine. It was used by farmers as far back as ancient Greece for mechanical tasks like grinding grain. Canada's oldest hydroelectric generating station that still is in operation today was commissioned right here in Canada's nation's capital in 1891. Generating Station Number 2 is located on Victoria Island in the heart of downtown Ottawa is a stone's throw away from Parliament Hill. It's been providing clean, renewable electricity for more than 130 years. While hydroelectricity first powered our great city and country, it was fossil fuels that quickly became the dominant energy source during the Industrial Age of the 20th century, until nuclear power arrived on the scene in the early 1960s. Now, because Canada is a water rich country, it's not surprising that our water power is our most abundant renewable resource, providing 60% of our country's total electricity. That means six out of every 10 homes in Canada are powered by water. This makes Canada the third largest generator of hydroelectricity in the world, after China and Brazil. To reduce Canada's emissions of greenhouse gasses that cause climate change, we must continue to increase the amount of zero emissions electricity we produce and strategically reduce our reliance on fossil fuels in other sectors. So here is today's big question. Can one of the world's oldest renewable power sources play a major role in Canada's Net Zero future? So, joining us today on the podcast is Gilbert Bennett. He is the president and CEO of WaterPower Canada, founded in 1998. WaterPower Canada is the national nonprofit trade association dedicated to representing the water power industry. Gilbert, welcome to the show.   Gilbert Bennett  03:21 Good morning, Daniel. Great to be here.   Dan Seguin  03:23 Now, you've joined WaterPower Canada at a very interesting time where there's a lot of national and international conversations about developments in hydroelectricity, as countries strive to meet their net zero targets. What is your vision on how water power Canada can participate in Canada's energy transformation and decarbonization?   Gilbert Bennett  03:49 So, we at WaterPower Canada represent the Canadian hydro electric industry, so the owners and operators were the vast majority of the Canadian hydropower fleet. So all the major utilities are members of the association. And we also have our industry partners that design manufacturing constructs for the industry. So given the hydropower provided, over 60% of Canada's electricity supply is going to be the backbone of the electricity industry for decades to come. Our role is to make sure that industry, governments, and the federal government, in particular, understand the important role that we play in the electricity system, and why hydropower is a key advantage of building a renewable future for Canada. So we're going to be aware that we're the dominant renewable supply for the Canadian electricity system. We have important value that's provided in terms of reliability. And I guess the ability to integrate other renewables in the system. So, we're going to be here for decades. We're going to be playing a major role in that transformation and the decarbonization of our economy.   Dan Seguin  04:57 Now, what's the value proposition that hydroelectric power brings to a clean, affordable and NetZero future?   05:07 Right. So, most importantly, we have key attributes. And I sort of touched on that in our last question there, we're firm and reliable. So, think about hydropower, just firm generation, there's water in the reservoir, we're going to be producing power at the power plant. It's not a question of is the wind blowing, is the sun shining? It's long term, high capacity, firm generation. And when I think about high-capacity storage for hydropower, in larger, the larger hydro systems, we're talking about 1000s of megawatts of power generation, delivered for months on end with large reservoir storage. So that's an important attribute that contributes to the reliability of our Canadian electricity system. And secondly, is dispatchable. So, we can adjust output of the plant as necessary to meet needs as they change your day to day order in order to balance out the deliveries from other renewables. So, in the absence of a fossil fuel fleet, hydropower with those capabilities is really important for us to maintain reliability and deliveries on our electricity system.   Dan Seguin  06:18 Gilbert, some people still believe that investments in renewable energy translate to higher electricity costs. But I read on your website that provinces with the highest hydropower installed capacity have the lowest electricity costs, perhaps you can break down why that is and what you think the public should know about hydropower that they may not already know.   Gilbert Bennett  06:48 So, if we look at the provinces of Canada with the highest installed base hydropower, they have facilities that were built with large scale capacity and large-scale storage, and they were built in the 60s and 70s. And they still operate reliably today. So, we look back to sort of the major construction that happened in the Canadian hydropower sector. Several decades ago, those long-term reliable assets are now producing really low cost energy, a lot of financing has been addressed from those facilities, and they have low operating costs, the cost of maintaining those facilities is, is a lot lower than the cost of building new ones today. So those those legacy assets are really important contributors to the low rates, we see in the, what I'll call the hydro dependent jurisdictions.   Dan Seguin  07:37 Very insightful. Thanks, Gilbert. Now, I know water power, Canada has commissioned some research projects. Can you maybe talk about some of those, and what makes them important to your sector and your goals?   Gilbert Bennett  07:53 So those studies, and there were four of them that were completed through last year with important financial support from Natural Resources Canada, and fortunately, they address some important topics to discuss hydropower in general. So, the first one deals with this question that we just talked about, what's the role that hydropower facilities play in ensuring reliable service for customers. So now we're getting into some technical points, inertia load, following regulation, frequency and voltage control. So those are things that customers don't think about and don't have to worry about, because they're really important questions or system operators, the people who manage and operate electricity grids. So, it's important for policymakers who are drafting the rules through the electricity sector to understand that these capabilities are essential to delivering reliable service. And in the absence of fossil generation, delivering those capabilities to a large extent is going to fall to the hydro fleet. It's important to understand the services that are uniquely provided by hydro facilities, some of the variable renewables don't have these capabilities. And the services that are provided by the hydro fleet are going to be much more important in the future as we retire the fossil fuel fleet across Canada. So that's, that's the first one. The second study looked at the potential for pumped storage hydro in Canada. And that's a topic that we haven't talked about a lot. It's a mature technology that's used in many places in the world. But with our conventional hydropower fleet here in Canada, we haven't had to worry about too much, but it is becoming an issue as a way to store energy from variable renewables and make it available when needed factor projects under consideration in Ontario. Today, there are two major projects in Ontario, one led by OPG and Northland power, and the TC energy's project in Georgian Bay is another one that probably would be familiar to listeners in Ontario for sure. There are also projects in Alberta. They're looking at that technology. So potential for pump storage as a large-scale storage opportunity to firm up variable renewables. It's an important topic elsewhere in the world. And it's one that we thought would be useful to highlight attention here in Canada. Third study looks at the potential for updating our existing facilities to increase the output of those facilities. So, we've identified 1000s of megawatts of potential that can be realized by replacing the existing turbines and generators and existing plants. So, the point here is that we're using existing dams, reservoirs and structures, while updating the technology inside the plant. So that's a cost-effective way to increase the efficiency of the plant or to increase capacity on the grid. And then finally, the last report looks at the cost of energy from previous generation sources. And we introduced the point here that variable renewables are inexpensive energy sources, but there are additional costs that will be incurred in the electricity systems making them dispatchable and available. And those are, those are features that are built into hydro generation. So, we want to raise the point here that the grid services that I talked about a second ago, need to be factored in when we're comparing various generation sources. So these points are really important for policymakers to understand, well, they're drafting the rules for the industry, and ultimately, for the services that our customers are gonna be relying on. Lots and lots of detail there. And if anybody's interested in taking a look at those reports, are all posted on our website at waterpowercanada.ca.   Dan Seguin  11:28 Okay, I really like this next question here. What are some projects and innovations that you're seeing from your members that you feel may usher in a new era for waterpower?   Gilbert Bennett  11:42 I think we look back at our aspirational goal in Canada to be net zero by 2050. So, talk about that on a fairly regular basis. Various experts have said that we'll need to double our electricity supply to achieve that goal. So just think about that for a second 25 or 30 years, we're going to rebuild the industry that's taken 125 years to build the infrastructure Canada that we have today. So, you know, that's a daunting challenge. And I think it'd be the first sign of the scale of that effort is probably from Hydro Quebec, where they've indicated that they plan to spend somewhere between 155 and $185 billion dollars on their electricity system between now and 2035, in order to set the stage and Quebec to be net zero by 2050. That level of investment, that scale of development of their electricity system, I think is a huge one. And it's one that if we're going to achieve our or aspirational goal is going to be replicated in multiple jurisdictions when we look at significant investments required to set the stage to electrify our economy. So that in itself is a, you know, is a hugely important error for I see the electricity sector in general, feel comfortable saying that water power is going to be an important piece of that.   Dan Seguin  13:07 Now, if memory serves me right, your organization released a collection of success stories of partnerships between utilities, energy companies, indigenous businesses, and organizations affiliated with First Nations. Gilbert, what can you tell us about the path forward? And its intersection is clean energy and reconciliation?   Gilbert Bennett  13:34 Right. So that report, branding indigenous businesses is also on our website. And it's a collection of case studies from members from our member companies that provide concrete examples of how WaterPower Canada member companies are working with indigenous businesses, First Nations, both as partners and owners and developers of projects. So, I think in the context of reconciliation, it should be fairly clear that projects and activities that happen on traditional land should benefit people who you know, who own that land. And here we have some specific examples of how things can be done and are being done to benefit indigenous communities and businesses. So, it's the way we need to move forward with development. It's an opportunity to work together, it's an opportunity to jointly understand issues, opportunities, challenges with projects, and to really come to a common understanding of how to do business together, both between, you know, our member companies and indigenous communities, important step forward. And I think the way things are going to be done in the future.   Dan Seguin  14:43 Okay, moving on to some challenges. It seems that the International Energy Agency expects hydropower generation to increase 50% by 2040. Is the hydropower sector, like many, having difficulty attracting new talent? What are the ways your sector is working to entice youth to consider hydroelectricity to keep up with the growing demand?   Gilbert Bennett  15:14 So, this is a huge challenge for not just our industry, but the Canadian economy in general, we have a retiring workforce, as our population ages. And we're not replacing people across multiple sectors in our economy. Certainly, an issue in the trades for construction and operations. So, a concern in engineering is a concern in most professions, that we're not replacing our workforce. And for our industry, we have a couple of associations that are really focused on this question. So, shout out for electricity, Human Resources, Canada here, they are playing a key role in highlighting opportunities, and reasons why people who are entering the workforce, you know, should look at a career in our sector. It's a common theme from trade unions to say, look, you know, here are these unionized positions, and the trades and the construction trades. And then the operating trades are high paying jobs, they have great working conditions. And they're a great way to build people's career. And it's probably something that we haven't talked about for a long time. These are ways to highlight opportunities in the industry, apprentice programs on projects are another way to highlight opportunities to get people entering the workforce. And then finally, you can link back to our discussion on indigenous communities where training, education, employment opportunities associated with projects are available for residents in nearby communities. But that's as most project developers today would look at that as a key way to both build workforce, and to build economic capability in the, in the communities where they're doing work. It's a big challenge. And we certainly have to, you know, find ways to get people into the trains to get things done. We're going to be talking about this one a lot.   Dan Seguin  17:04 Now, I'm curious to find out what makes our hydropower unique, isn't our production generation water rich reserves, or our cold climate that sets Canada's hydropower apart from other countries?   Gilbert Bennett  17:20 So, first of all, we look at the resource that we have, we have 7% of the world's renewable freshwater. So, 7% of the water that falls on the face of the planet, lands in Canada, and we have 5% of the world's population. So those were important to have the raw resources in the first place. So that certainly we have that in spades, but also the large landmass, we have favorable topography for hydropower sites, so the right to the terrain and most of Canada is favorable to hydropower development. We're a large country with a small population, but lots of water. So, we have a great resource. And I think that that's probably the key reason why we've, you know, got to where we are.   Dan Seguin  18:08 Okay, that's good, Gilbert. Now, do you expect hydropower to remain Canada's largest source of reliable, renewable power for the foreseeable future? What is something you want the government to know right now about how investing in hydroelectricity can help it achieve its netzero goals?   Gilbert Bennett  18:32 Okay, so the first, the first most important point is that the attributes of your hydropower fleet, the technical capabilities are really important in continuing to ensure that electricity, services for customers are reliable, cost effective and renewable. Now, our future is going to be all in with every non emitting and renewable option. So hydro, wind, solar, nuclear, hydrogen, all of these alternatives to fossil fuels, and others are going to be critical for us to achieve our net zero, or near zero aspiration. Hydro today is the backbone of our fleet. It has important services, and it's important to glue the rest of the system together. So that's probably the most important point and then we would say that development of hydropower facilities are long term investments, they have long term development cycles. So we need to be able to find ways to move forward with project approvals with upgrades with expansions you know that deliver low cost service to customers. Now we also recommend with note that our generator members are either major utilities or their producers themselves. So, getting the maximum value from our assets is going to be really important as well and the industry is going to continue to look at existing assets to see how we can get more out of those. So that may be increasing the capacity of sites using, you know, improving efficiency, being strategic about where you know where projects get built. And then finally understanding where hydro fits compared to other technologies. And there's a given that there will be opportunities for those other technologies to play important roles in this electricity system as well. When we look at sort of doubling the electricity system, there's going to be a lot of investment all around. And I think what we would say is that, you know, back to the fundamental point, hydropower is the backbone of the generating fleet in Canada. And it provides, you know, key services that are going to be needed now, well into the future.   Dan Seguin  20:35 Finally, Gilbert, we always end our interviews with some rapid-fire questions. We've got some new ones for you. Are you ready?   Gilbert Bennett  20:44 Let's go. Okay.   Dan Seguin  20:46 What are you reading right now?   Gilbert Bennett  20:48 Nothing on the bookshelf today. So, I will say the last binge read I had was on vacation last summer, and it would have been one of Tom Clancy novels.   Dan Seguin  20:57 Okay, good. Now, Gilbert, what would you name your boat? If you had one? Or maybe you do have one?   Gilbert Bennett  21:04 I don't. We don't have one. This one is a standing family joke. The name of the boat would be Ylime, which is my daughter Emily's name spelled backwards. That's a standing joke for a while with the family.   Dan Seguin  21:18 Here's another question, Gilbert. Who is someone that you truly admire?   Gilbert Bennett  21:23 All right, so let's look back in history to someone who dealt with challenges on a similar scale to what we're talking about now. And I think I'd have to look to maybe someone like General Leslie Groves, from the Manhattan Project. So those of you have seen Oppenheimer would have a pretty clear handle about how he got things moving to that project.   Dan Seguin  21:46 Okay, moving on here. What is the closest thing to real magic that you've witnessed?   Gilbert Bennett  21:52 Oh wow. Okay, so I'm an electrical engineer. So, some real things are more like magic to a lot of people. I would say for me, 15 years of effort of the Muskrat Falls project in Labrador, close to the breaker to put the first unit online, looks like magic after all that effort.   Dan Seguin  22:11 What has been the biggest challenge to you personally, since the pandemic began?   Gilbert Bennett  22:18 Oh, well, I would say switching from a large office setting to a virtual team. And you know, of course, during my time on the Muskrat Project, we had, you know, 300 people on our team, and you're interacting with them on a daily basis. And now you go to a virtual team, and you're doing pretty well, everything like we're doing here today remotely. That was a major adjustment for me.   Dan Seguin  22:40 Okay. Now, we've all been watching a little more TV, a little more Netflix. What is your favorite show? Or series?   Gilbert Bennett  22:49 Oh, I just got through the last season of Slow Horses on Apple TV. So Misfits, that and MI five, who find a way to get things done. It was a pretty, pretty enjoyable series for me.   Dan Seguin  23:03 Lastly, what's exciting you about your industry right now?   Gilbert Bennett  23:08 Oh, wow. I would say in a nutshell, everything. Sort of the scope, the scale, the challenges, the opportunities that we've talked about, I think are all are all exciting, and helping to, you know, find a way to retool our, our entire society so that it runs on renewables, I think is a huge is a huge challenge. And it was definitely pretty exciting.   Dan Seguin  23:30 Well, Gilbert, this is it. We've reached the end of another episode of the think energy podcast. If our listeners want to learn more about you and your organization, how can they connect?   Gilbert Bennett  23:42 Oh, two ways. Visit our website waterpowercanada.ca. And we're on LinkedIn as well. So follow the association. And keep up with what's going on in the industry.   Dan Seguin  23:54 Again, Gilbert, thank you so much for joining me today. I hope you had a lot of fun. Cheers.,   Gilbert Bennett  23:59 Oh this was great. It was great to be with you Daniel. Thanks so much.   Dan Seguin  24:06 Thanks for tuning in for another episode of the think energy podcast. Don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review wherever you're listening. And to find out more about today's guests or previous episodes, visit thinkenergypodcast.com I hope you will join us again next time as we spark even more conversations about the energy of tomorrow.  

Ice storms, blizzards, and high winds can all lead to extended power outages, turning bad weather into a crisis for those affected. And Canada has had several intense cold weather events in recent years. In part 2 of mitigating the impacts of winter, experts Guy Lepage, Canadian Red Cross Disaster Management Volunteer, Julie Lupinacci, Chief Customer Officer at Hydro Ottawa, and Jim Pegg, Director of Infrastructure Products and Services at Envari Energy Solutions, share how to prepare for a winter disaster.   Related links   ●     Guy Lepage on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/guy-lepage-8568289 ●     Julie Lupinaccii on LinkedIn: https://ca.linkedin.com/in/juliejlupinacci ●     Jim Pegg on LinkedIn: https://ca.linkedin.com/in/jim-pegg-4b588b17 ●     Hydro Ottawa: https://hydroottawa.com/en ●     Canadian Red Cross: https://www.redcross.ca/ ●     Envair Energy Solutions: https://envari.com/  ●     Hydro Ottawa emergency preparedness: https://hydroottawa.com/en/outages-safety/emergency-preparedness ●     Canadian Red Cross emergency preparedness and recovery: https://www.redcross.ca/how-we-help/emergencies-and-disasters-in-canada/be-ready-emergency-preparedness-and-recovery/ ●     Envari electric vehicles and infrastructure: https://envari.com/electric-vehicle-infrastructure/   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: YouTube   Follow along on Instagram   Stay in the know on Facebook   Keep up with the posts on X: 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. Welcome back, everyone. And thank you for joining us for part two of our winter highlight reel, where we revisit clips from previous interviews discussing the unique impact our Canadian winters have on our energy sector. Although Canadians are accustomed to cold and snowy winters, Recent years have brought more intense weather events into the mix. From heavy snowfall to ice storms to bone chilling subzero temperatures, these factors are driving the need for emergency preparedness and protocols to ensure public safety. Whether you're snugged at home or navigating the elements during your commute, utility companies like hydro Ottawa are pushing for increased reliability of their system. The goal is to keep your power on and keep you informed before, during and after outages. This commitment also extends to supporting the growing presence of electric vehicles on the road, emphasizing reliability in electric transportation. In our first clip, I spoke to Guy Lepage, a volunteer with the Canadian Red Cross disaster management, he sheds light on how the Red Cross provides support for those who may face devastating experiences. Let's dive into this conversation. Guy, we usually think of major disasters, but let's talk about personal disasters. I read that 97% of Red Cross responses in the last five years have been for personal disasters. What is the most common personal disaster that Canadians experience?   Guy Lepage  02:17 House fires, it's that simple. For whatever reason, it could be a faulty electrical outlet. A lot of times people leave stuff on the stove and it spreads. Fire starts to spread, but they happen in a home. And so people get out with their lives but nothing else. And that's where we show up. When there's a fire at two o'clock in the morning, there will be two volunteers who will show up. And then they will assess the family to make sure they have lodging, they have a place to stay, whether it's a hotel or shelter. And then we will make sure that they have gift cards to buy clothing and to buy food and take care of them for three days. And we're an emergency service, so after three days, people have to make their own arrangements, but we are there to make sure that they get a semblance of normalcy back as quickly as possible. And you can do that if you don't have a place to stay, and a safe place to stay. And you don't have any money. And so that's what we do, we make sure that they get back on their feet. And we give them a hygiene kit, with toothpaste, toothbrush, deodorant, you know, the essentials of life that we all take for granted. So that's why forest, house fires are the biggest, the biggest sources of disaster in Canada. But if, of course, we are ready to respond to any kind of disaster and and, you know, if you live in an apartment building, for example, there might be a fire and another unit. But you might have water damage. I mean, first of all, if there's a fire in the unit, the entire building gets evacuated until the firefighters inspect everything and decide who, when and where it's safe to go back in. Now, in many cases, the entire building has to be evacuated and stay empty until major repairs are conducted. And that's where the Red Cross will set up a shelter in a community center and in a school or even the church to take care of people for three days until the authorities deem it's safe to go back into the apartment complex. If it's longer than that, then folks have to make other arrangements.   Dan Seguin  04:29 Okay. Here's a follow up question for you. Sorry about those. Why do house fires occur more often in winter months? And what are the causes?   Guy Lepage  04:42 I'm told by fire officials that it's careless use of pots and pans in the kitchen, you leave something unattended and it just causes a fire. But there are a wide variety of reasons. I mean, even though there are fewer smokers in Canadian society, we still get fires caused by careless cigarette use, or kids playing with lighters. I remember one case a few years ago, where indeed, mom and dad and three kids living in an apartment, and one of the kids got a hold of a lighter and set the drapes on fire. And then of course, it was get out, get out, get out. So we responded, they went to a friend's location, so we responded to take care of them to arrange for accommodation and food and clothing. And I'm talking to the mom, and she still has to sit on her face because of the fire. And she starts crying and teardrops are rolling down through her soot stained cheeks and I'll always remember that image, because she was crying because it happened but crying that she was so happy that we were there to assist. So it's just one of those images, one of the many memories I have as a responder. But you know, you have to remind people to be very careful with all flammable situations, you know, whether it's a stove, matches, cigarettes, just be careful. Just be very, very careful in your home. We don't want to respond at two o'clock in the morning because that means you've gone through a crisis, we will of course, but if you can prevent it, that's even better.   Dan Seguin  06:21 Okay. so next up, speaking on the topic of extreme weather, and preparing for emergencies. I have a clip from my interview on what electricity customers want with Julie Lupinacci, Hydro Ottawa's Chief Customer Officer. Julie speaks to how Hydro Ottawa is actively working on leveraging advanced technologies in order to improve communications during crisis situations. When customers are out of power, she also shares some key things to focus on when preparing an emergency kit for your family. Here's what Julie had to say. We are all aware that Ottawa has had some major, major weather events these past five to six years. What would you say to customers that are worried about reliability, power outages, and restoration?   Julie Lupinacci  07:19 Yeah, weather events have been tough. They're tough fun. And I don't think Ottawa has seen something like this in a very long time, like probably since the '98 ice storm and I'm not even sure that really measured up to the same impact right of what we saw and what customers dealt with. But what I would say is Hydro Ottawa has put a lot of focus on what we need to do from a grid perspective to adapt to the changing climate that we're seeing here in Ottawa. And that includes those weather events. Like I don't want to pretend that I know more than our Chief Electricity Distribution Officer, like I think you interviewed him maybe a couple of weeks ago. And in that podcast, he talks about what we're doing to future proof the grid against those extreme weather events. So I'm not going to try to think that I have anything more impactful that he will say on that front. But I will say that, from a front office perspective, from a customer service, from a communications perspective, we are really looking at a lot of those tools, and further modernizing them. And what I mean by that is, is taking a look at some different technology that allows us to receive more phone calls into our system, triage those phone calls, using some cloud based technology. So that not everybody is forced to talk to an individual because even at the height of the storm, like you're not going to have 10,000 people answering phone calls within a couple minutes of the storm hitting but we can use technology to triage to allow our customers to know that we know if they are out of power and provide them with the information that we have at that time. So looking at updating some of the telephony software that we have in utilize some of the new technology there. So we are actively working on that. The other component to communications because I think communications really is that biggest avenue for our customers especially during these winter weather events is pushing information out and we are looking to be working on an SMS text based technology system that allows us to push information out so similar to what we're pushing out through our social media channels today. Now sending that information directly to customers, either on their iPhone or potentially in their email box however they want to receive those inputs and alerts from hydro Ottawa. We also took some steps to help people become aware like the weather alert, the weather system and the weather alerts. that are out there giving people a heads up on systems that are coming through. Like that's, that's one thing. But I think customers want to know, when we're looking at a weather event that's different, right? You'll, you'll know when rains coming into Ottawa and you'll get those alerts about snow and all of those things, but not all weather impacts our grid, and what we're looking at is to be able to provide an alert system, again, through through whether it's an SMS or an email out directly into customers inboxes, so to speak, giving them a heads up when we're watching it differently, right. And if we're watching it differently, you know, messages are going out, make sure phones are charged, make sure that you've got blankets, make sure you know where your flashlights and your candles are. So really concentrate on getting people ready for what they need to do. So there's a few steps and you can follow us on hydroottawa.com to get better details on that. But that's what we're doing and making sure that we're putting that out there. Additionally, we've piloted sorry, Dan, I got one more. Additionally, we've piloted a battery program, this was used to be able to support some of our capital work. But in the recent storm this year, we use that battery pilot to be able to help some of the most vulnerable customers in Ottawa, that are really relying on electricity to be able to breathe, right and working with the paramedics hand in hand to make sure that these batteries got to those households so that they, you know, had some additional time for us to get the power back on either to their house or to the community.   Dan Seguin  11:42 Now tell me Julie, what are some of the things customers can do to be better prepared for emergencies and outages?   Julie Lupinacci  11:51 Yeah, so I think there's a few things that we need to do. One, I think we need some major awareness about what that is, like, going back to our elementary school days when we had to plot out the fire, you know, the fire escape plan for our house, right? And go back to thinking about if there's an emergency, do we have an emergency kit together? Right? Do we have bottled water in our house? Do we have working flashlights, right? Not just flashlights that don't have batteries? But where are those batteries? And they are up to date, right? Making sure that you have them not all over the place. But you know where these flashlights are right. I know if anybody's like my kids, they come in, they grab the flashlights and all of a sudden they're in different locations around the house like they need to be, your emergency kit needs to be in one central place so that you know how to get to it, whether the lights are on or off. The other piece is I would make sure that you're following us on our social channels, because we do put information out there. So make sure if you haven't connected with us that you do connect with us. And you can go to our website to find out what those are, I won't list them off here. But the other piece that I would really strongly suggest is that people go and update their contact information into our database or into our database, which will become even more crucial as we start sending these alerts and messages directly to you. Right, no longer just through social media but directly to you and your household to be able to let you know what's going. And if I could say one other thing is that I think planning based on our reliability that we've always had, and the experience that you've always had to these dates, it's no longer enough, right? Like hydro is going to do everything that we can to get the power back on. But you need to plan for Worst case scenario, you can't plan only for the best case. So having an alternative place to go speaking with family and saying if power's out here, we're going to come over and what do we need to bring? Having those plans in place in advance makes you better equipped to withstand any weather event that comes through that may have an outage associated with it.   Dan Seguin  13:59 NExt up, I have Jim Pegg, Director of Infrastructure Products and Services at Envari Energy Solutions. In my interview with Jim he shared all about electric vehicles, including the benefits and challenges of ownership in Canada. In this upcoming clip, he shares some strategies around optimizing electric vehicle usage in winter. Being an EV owner myself, I can confirm that our cold Canadian winters pose certain challenges when it comes to battery life. Is this something to be aware of? And how can organizations mitigate any issues?   Jim Pegg  14:41 So I would say yes, it is true that the cold weather has an impact on batteries, you know, depending on where you are on the globe, there's different different weather patterns and so on, but cold weather certainly has an impact on batteries and the range needed of those batteries. Currently, there are a few ways to tackle this. One is something called pre-conditioning, meaning having your vehicle plugged in while it's warming up in the morning, and you can actually automate that to take place at a certain time. And it can help maintain the battery's range for that day. So that can have a really big impact. The other factor, you know, is what we talked about a little bit earlier, it was a driver training, you know, simple things like understanding the impact of few degrees of heat can have or how people actually drive smooth versus hard accelerations, all those things have an impact on the range you get out of your battery. The good news is with you know, with upfront planning, these issues can be managed to a point where they're not issues at all, you know, and if, if more public chargers come along each year, the certainty around getting from point A to B, to C, D, E, F, and G will get stronger and stronger. There's also a lot of work going into battery technology itself that will help with cold climates as well as the speed at which batteries can be recharged without causing, you know, increased battery degradation. The risk right now is if you know fleets of vehicles are out there and they're constantly having to use fast chargers and higher power chargers on their vehicles on the smaller size fleets that can have a damaging impact on your battery life. But there's a lot of technology going into working on that. But again, with good planning and understanding of a fleet's needs, there are certainly ways to plan around those issues.   Dan Seguin  16:26 Now, I may be biased but as a proud owner of an EV, who has been driving in all sorts of wintry conditions, I can say that the benefits of EV driving far outweigh the challenges around battery usage in the cold. So if you're considering purchasing an EV on your own, I can tell you that you won't regret it. And as Jim said, the technology is always improving. Finally, folks, thank you for joining me today for part two of our winter highlight reel. And thank you for another incredible year! Oh, and before I forget, I'd love to hear from you, our listeners. If you have any feedback or suggestions for future episodes, please reach out to thinkenergy@hydroottawa.com. I'd love to hear from you. I can't wait to continue this journey with you, so we'll be back in two weeks. On Tuesday, January 2, to kickoff 2024 with all new shows, interesting guests and topics. And, as always, there will be some surprises. Don't forget to subscribe to stay in the loop. Until next time, folks. Happy holidays. Cheers. Thanks for tuning in for another episode of the thinkenergy podcast. Don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review wherever you're listening. And to find out more about today's guests or previous episodes, visit thinkenergypodcast.com And I hope you will join us again next time as we spark even more conversations about the energy of tomorrow.  

Winter isn’t always a wonderland. In Canada, the season brings a flurry of unique challenges, heightened in recent years by extreme weather events. This episode, the first of two parts to close out the year, revisits thinkenergy’s coolest clips sharing energy considerations and solutions to help mitigate the impacts of winter on our homes, infrastructure, and safety. Hear from experts Shawn Carr, Manager of Customer Experience at Hydro Ottawa, and Nick Levac, FLM at Hydro One.   Related links Shawn Carr on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bryce-conrad-2ab1b352/  Nick Levac on LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicklevac/  Hydro Ottawa: https://hydroottawa.com/en Why everyone’s talking about heat pumps: https://hydroottawa.com/en/blog/why-everyones-talking-about-heat-pumps Warming up to cold climate heat pumps: https://envari.com/stories/community-centre/ Hydro Ottawa Tree Trimming: https://hydroottawa.com/en/outages-safety/community-safety/tree-trimming To subscribe using Apple Podcasts:  https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/thinkenergy/id1465129405   To subscribe using Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7wFz7rdR8Gq3f2WOafjxpl   To subscribe on Libsyn: http://thinkenergy.libsyn.com/ --- Subscribe so you don't miss a video: https://www.youtube.com/user/hydroottawalimited   Follow along on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hydroottawa   Stay in the know on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HydroOttawa   Keep up with the posts on X: https://twitter.com/thinkenergypod  

Are you prepared for a prolonged power outage? Extreme weather is more common due to climate change. Canada’s experienced disastrous tornadoes, wildfires, and wind and ice storms over the past few years alone, leading to massive disruption to utilities and public safety. Be prepared, stay informed. Dive into the urgent discussion on emergency preparedness in episode 125 of thinkenergy, featuring insights from Hydro Ottawa’s CEO, Bryce Conrad, and Canadian Red Cross Disaster Management Volunteer, Guy Lepage.   Related links   Bryce Conrad on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bryce-conrad-2ab1b352/  Guy Lepage, LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/guy-lepage-8568289/  The Canadian Red Cross: https://www.redcross.ca/how-we-help/emergencies-and-disasters-in-canada  Hydro Ottawa: https://hydroottawa.com/en Hydro Ottawa safety resources: https://hydroottawa.com/en/outages-safety  Hydro Ottawa emergency preparedness: https://hydroottawa.com/en/outages-safety/emergency-preparedness To subscribe using Apple Podcasts:  https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/thinkenergy/id1465129405   To subscribe using Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7wFz7rdR8Gq3f2WOafjxpl   To subscribe on Libsyn: http://thinkenergy.libsyn.com/ --- Subscribe so you don't miss a video: https://www.youtube.com/user/hydroottawalimited   Follow along on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hydroottawa   Stay in the know on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HydroOttawa   Keep up with the posts on X: https://twitter.com/thinkenergypod ---- Transcript: Dan Seguin  00:06 This is think energy, the podcast that helps you better understand the fast changing world of energy through conversations with game changers, industry leaders, and influencers. So join me, Dan Seguin, as I explore both traditional and unconventional facets of the energy industry. Hey, everyone, welcome back. We're going to take a different direction for today's show. For the first time, I don't have a guest lined up. Instead, on today's show, I'm going to talk about a topic that is close to my heart as a communicator in the electricity sector. And it's something that affects us all. prolonged power outages caused by major weather events. More specifically, I want to talk about what each of us can do to take personal responsibility during a crisis, and how we can all take steps to plan for prolonged outages due to an ice storm, a tornado, heat waves or major wind storms. Now, most of the time, power outages are over shortly after they begin. But with a major storm outages can last much longer. We've all experienced being without power for an extended period of time. And we know that extreme weather events have become more frequent and intense due to climate change. And wow, Canada has certainly experienced his share of national disasters recently, something that we all felt for the first time was the effect of forest fires this past summer. According to the Canadian interagency Forest Fire Center, there were approximately 6623 fires recorded across Canada in 2023, burning a total of 18 million hectares. These fires wiped out entire forest communities, and all infrastructure that supports those that live in these areas including their electricity. Here in Ottawa, we only experienced poor air quality, unlike anything I have ever seen in my lifetime living in the nation's capital. Also in Ottawa this year, there was an Easter ice storm in April, tornadoes that touched down in the south end of the city in the summer, and a number of lightning strikes in June, July and August that broke records and caused a number of outages in the region. It reminded me of a conversation I had with my boss, Bryce Conrad, President and CEO of Hydro Ottawa, back in February 2022. At that time, I asked him how concerned he was with climate change. Listen to his response. You'll think he just said this yesterday. Here's what he had to say then.   Bryce Conrad  03:03 So let's just state categorically that climate change is real. You know, as I sit here today, it's minus 27,000 degrees outside. People go "oh global warming, why is it so damn cold? And of course, you just want to smack people that say things like that. But God's honest truth is climate change is not about the day to day weather, it's about weather patterns. It's about  how, you know, in the past, we've had wind storms and ice storms, we've had eight tornadoes, including one in downtown Nepean. You know, we've had a one in 100 year flood, followed by a one in 1000 year flood. We've had heat waves that have stretched and taxed our system. And all of this is just like, quite frankly, within the past five years. So that's what climate change means. It means unpredictable, changing, dramatically changing weather patterns. And if you run a utility, like I do, or like we do, you don't like that. You know, our infrastructure is built to withstand X. It's not well not built to withstand x plus 30%, or x plus 50%. So, you know, when a wind storm comes through, the infrastructure is ready to sustain winds up to 90 miles an hour or something like that. Well, you know, we all saw what happened when tornadoes came through, you know, 130 miles or 160 miles an hour, right? Those poles snapped like twigs. That's what climate change means. So, you know, it's terrifying. It's absolutely terrifying. And, you know, it's something that we have to start to build into our plans as to how we build better in the future. Sure, so are we building our infrastructure to withstand 90 mile an hour winds? Are we building them to withstand 150 mile an hour winds? While there's a cost difference to that, obviously, but the answer is, yeah, we've got to do a better job of building stronger, more resilient infrastructure. If you're building you know, if you saw during the floods, the Chaudiere Facility, which is our new generating asset down at Chaudiere Falls. You know, you were seeing for the first time in history, all 50 of the gates of the ring dam were open. And there was more, I think it was two Olympic swimming pools were passing through the gates every second. The waterfall, the water, the speed in the waterfall was faster than the Niagara Falls. Like I mean, these are things that shouldn't be happening in downtown Ottawa, but have happened three times since I've been here, and that's 10 years. So if anyone wants to have a debate about whether or not climate change is real, call me up. Let's have that conversation. Because it's very real, and it's going to dramatically impact our future. In terms of the energy transition, I think I talked a bit about it. But you know, when we bottle out, and look at what our future looks like, 50 years from now, our infrastructure looks fundamentally different than it does today. It's in fundamentally different places than it is today. You know, we're going to rely upon artificial intelligence, machine learning. You know, each and every one of those, like, everything will be censored up. So, you know, the idea is that, as opposed to us rolling a track to fix something that's broken or down, we can sort of simply reroute it from the control center. So yes, we still have to get out there and fix what's broken. But for you, the customer of Hydro Ottawa, you actually won't notice the impact because the power will have switched over to another source instantaneously. That's the goal.   Dan Seguin  07:09 Some powerful words from Bryce Conrad, President, CEO of Hydro Ottawa, about climate change, and its effects on the electricity grid. I found his comments about how the advancement of artificial intelligence could result in a self healing grid. And the customer wouldn't even know that there was an outage because the system would be smart enough to know to reroute the power from another source. Sounds futuristic indeed, but something worthy to work towards. Since this is likely a couple of decades off, I want to spend a little bit of time sharing how utilities tackled power outages and restoration today. It's important to understand how it all works. You may be surprised to learn that utilities observe and monitor weather conditions, staying on top of changing weather patterns, so they can alert customers about possible outages in advance. Weather warnings are issued and Hydro Ottawa crews are put on standby to respond to emergencies. During the Ottawa ice storm back in April 2023. More than 225 internal and external field resources were called up to repair damage across the city of Ottawa. This was the second highest use of resources in hydraulic was historic, and it proves the point that utilities are taking these weather events seriously. To provide some perspective, I think it helps understand how utilities assess and restore power after a storm. It's important for us to know this so we can manage our expectations. In today's world we want it all now on demand. It's good to know what happens behind the scenes and the rationale that determines why some customers get restored before others. After a major storm causes widespread outages. The first job of the utility is to investigate the extent of the damage and determine the resources required to restore the power. Here's a general breakdown of how many utilities prioritize restoration after they've performed an assessment of the damage. Priority One: respond to public safety issues and emergencies. Priority two: fix critical electrical system infrastructure like substations and main power lines. Priority three: restore power to critical infrastructure and emergency services like hospitals, airports, water and sewage treatment plants. Priority four: repair power lines that will restore power to the largest number of customers. Priority five: we store smaller clusters of neighborhoods. And finally, priority six: respond to individual homes and businesses that may have sustained damage to their own electrical equipment. Public and personal safety are top of mind for restoration crews who must also deal with the aftermath of any storm, including falling trees, branches, windy conditions, heavy fog, thunder, lightning, and icy roads, all of which make restoring power difficult. And while restoring power is their main purpose, it's important that these brave women and men do not put their lives at risk. conditions have to be safe for them to work. So now, let's get to the part where we find out what we can do as individuals before, during and after a major storm that has caused widespread damage and a power outage. To kick off this section, I'm going to first play a clip from an interview I did earlier this year with Guy Lepage, a disaster management volunteer with the Canadian Red Cross. Guy has been deployed to some of the world's biggest disasters and relief operations here in Canada, and overseas. No matter the emergency, big or small. I asked Guy during our conversation how Canadians can better prepare for emergencies in general, and especially during prolonged outages, being self-sufficient for three days is still the golden rule. Here's what he had to say.   Guy Lepage  11:37 Yes, three days is the golden rule. You have to plan to sit around your kitchen table with your family, or do it yourself and sit and plan for 72 hours (three days) from the perspective that I can't get out of my house because of a snowstorm, ice storm, fire whatever the situation. Can I stay in my home for 72 hours to carry on a normal lifestyle and a sense that I need to eat, I need to bathe, I need medication for people who need medication in my house, you have to plan ahead because if you don't, and you figure, hey, first responders will come and take care of me well, they may not be able to because there'll be taking care of other people with greater needs. So as I said, You need to have enough water and we're talking three liters per person a day, one liter to drink and two liters. To wash and bathe. You need to have enough dry goods, you need to have enough food that won't go bad. If you are using an electric can opener. Have a manual one. If you depend on the internet and your cell phone, you need to have a crank operated radio or battery operated radio so you can listen to the local emergency newscast to find out hey, how long am I on my own here, okay. But most importantly, if anyone in your home needs medication, you need to have more than three days worth on hand. I'll give you an example in 2013. Here in the Greater Toronto Area, there was a major ice storm. And major portions of the area were without power for more than three days. We set up a shelter in Ajax where I live. And on Christmas morning I'm going around the different rooms in a community Senator we've set up where people stayed overnight. There was a elderly gentleman in a wheelchair, who said, You know last night when I arrived, I only had one pill left for my heart condition. I had to cut it in half. So I've taken half, I'm down to my last half. What am I going to do? So luckily, we had a nurse on hand who was able to find a pharmacy that was open and we replaced his medication. But if this is a scenario that you're in your home with someone who takes life saving medication, heart condition, insulin for diabetes, whatever. And then you can't leave for three days and you run out of medication that could have catastrophic consequences. So always plan ahead to have enough medication. Enough pet food and enough water enough dry goods to survive on your own for three days.   Dan Seguin  14:17 That was Guy Lepgage, disaster management volunteer with Canadian Red Cross, talking about his experience as a person who has had his boots on the ground during numerous disasters here in Canada and abroad. He mentioned something very interesting, and I'm going to leave it with you today. As probably the most important takeaway from this show, come up with a three day plan. A great place to start and I'm a little biased here is to go to hydro ottawa.com and visit the emergency preparedness section. There. You will find resources and information about what to consider when building that plan. I hope this episode has helped you consider having those necessary conversations around emergency preparedness. I know this is a departure from our usual podcast programming, but it's an important topic as winter weather approaches. Now, I hope you found this episode worthwhile and informative. Thank you so much for joining me today. I hope you had a lot of fun. Cheers. Thanks for tuning in for another episode of the think energy podcast. Don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review wherever you're listening. And to find out more about today's guests or previous episodes, visit thinkenergypodcast.com And I hope you'll join us again next time as we spark even more conversations about the energy of tomorrow.

The renewable revolution is here. Scientists, entrepreneurs, and policymakers—including Indigenous and industry leaders—are accelerating the transition to clean energy. But does Canada unanimously agree on the path to a more sustainable future? Philippe Dunsky, founder of Dunsky Energy + Climate Advisors, joins thinkenergy to discuss. From climate counsels and regional challenges to greener business practices and how to positively impact the clean energy and climate sectors. Listen to Episode 124 today.   Related links   Philippe Dunsky on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/philippedunsky/  Dunsky Energy + Climate Advisors: https://www.dunsky.com/  Dunsky Energy + Climate Advisors on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/dunsky-energy-climate-advisors/ To subscribe using Apple Podcasts:  https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/thinkenergy/id1465129405   To subscribe using Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7wFz7rdR8Gq3f2WOafjxpl   To subscribe on Libsyn: http://thinkenergy.libsyn.com/ --- Subscribe so you don't miss a video: https://www.youtube.com/user/hydroottawalimited   Follow along on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hydroottawa   Stay in the know on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HydroOttawa Keep up with the posts on X: https://twitter.com/thinkenergypod ---- Transcript: Dan Seguin  00:06 This is think energy, the podcast that helps you better understand the fast changing world of energy through conversations with game changers, industry leaders, and influencers. So join me, Dan Seguin, as I explore both traditional and unconventional facets of the energy industry. Hey, everyone, welcome back. Right now, there are scientists, entrepreneurs, policymakers, indigenous and industry leaders, helping to shape the direction that Canada will take to accelerate a transition to clean energy. Everywhere you look, whether it's academia, municipal, provincial, or federal governments, there's another council or committee being formed to address the most pressing issues of our time, climate change, from transitioning to sustainable energy sources, electrifying transportation, and improving energy efficiency to protecting our natural environment and reducing carbon emissions. One thing is for certain our country is embracing the renewable revolution, like never before. But those with seats at the decision table know that it must be done responsibly, and affordable. As we know, every region of Canada is unique and presents its own set of challenges and opportunities when it comes to tackling climate change, and ways to implement clean energy. So here is today's big question. How did we get such a vast and diverse country like Canada to agree on a pathway forward to a cleaner, greener and more sustainable energy future? Joining us today is Philippe Dunsky of Dunsky Energy and Climate Advisors, a consultancy firm that Philippe founded. It supports government, utilities, corporations across North America to accelerate their transition to clean energy. Phillippe, is the co chair of Canada's new Canada electricity Advisory Council, the co chair of efficiency Canada, and the director of the greater Montreal Climate Fund. He also previously chaired the Quebec government electrification Working Group. Welcome to the show, Philippe. Let's start by asking you this. Having just gone over some of your accomplishments, where does this passion for clean energy and climate come from? Where did it start?   Philippe Dunsky  02:44 So, so great to be here. By the way, thank you so much for having me. It started, I guess, I guess very early on. I'm Jewish background and grew up with, you know, endless stories about the Holocaust. And somehow that kind of morphed into just a general  interest for world affairs and for big challenges, big societal challenges. And then as I was growing up, those became really focused on environmental issues. So that was the genesis. I became very, very interested in environmental issues. And then through that, and climate change in particular, as probably the greatest challenge of my generation, and for my generation. And then, I guess the other thing is, I've come to discover that I'm a pretty analytical guy. So I'm not a no great protester, I'm not a great to great movement leader, I tend to see a lot of gray, not so much black and white. And so that's how I ended up deciding to get involved in these issues. But, you know, in my own way through more of an analytical lens,   Dan Seguin  03:55 Okay, you've served and are serving on numerous councils, committees and boards. Can you tell us what has been the biggest takeaway you've learned through each collaboration? And how has it changed you?   Philippe Dunsky  04:11 Yeah, because each one does change you and changes your perspectives. Because ultimately, the biggest takeaway is that no matter how much I think I know this stuff and know this stuff. Well, and I've been working on energy issues for over 30 years now. And so, you know, I always end up thinking that I know the answer. What we discover is that, you know, there's not a single answer, there are many perspectives. And if you can combine knowledge with multiple perspectives, then you can come up with something that's hopefully going to be closer to that, you know, to that truth, or whatever you want to call it. My big learning is that every time you go into something like this, you go in with an open mind and an open heart. And if you do that, and you're listening to others perspectives, then you're bound to land on something that's a hell of a lot smarter. And then what you initially thought coming into it?   Dan Seguin  05:02 Okay, cool. Now, you were appointed chair for a recently formed Canada electricity Advisory Council. Can you tell our listeners who's on it? What is the mandate? And just how big of an undertaking is this?   Philippe Dunsky  05:19 Sure, I can start with the last question, by the way, that the undertaking, it's a really big issue, it's a really big challenge. On the other hand, the undertaking itself is time limited, it's a 12 month thing. So I'm a pumpkin and I turned into a pumpkin in May. It's been five months now. So I got another seven to go. From that perspective, that's the timing that we're looking at. Okay, Council itself is a group of 18 Canadians from across the country, every single, every single province, no exception. It's, it's extraordinary mix of individuals with an extraordinary mix of experience and perspective. So I'd say roughly half of council members are either current or former utility executives. The other half is a bit more of an eclectic mix of former regulators, we have people involved in the power production side of things, we have first nations leaders, so indigenous leaders, and a couple of others with different perspectives to bring to the table. But the really important thing here, I think, is that you're looking at the leadership level from every single province across the country. And that makes for really, really enlightening and challenging conversations as well. And then I guess you asked about the purpose or the mandate of the council. So I'll put it at a very, very fundamental level as a country, we're trying to largely decarbonize electricity by sometime in the middle of the 2030s. And we're looking to grow electricity, very substantially to decarbonize the rest of the economy. By 2050. That's that dual set of goals is at the heart of our mandate. And our mandate is to figure out what the feds can and must do. And at the same time, what can and must be done by others in the country, to help make this an easier journey, a more affordable journey. And ultimately, a more successful journey on the way there.   Dan Seguin  07:22 Okay, great segue here. Now, with respect to Canada's goal to achieve a 100%, Net Zero electricity system by 2035, you stated, "Is it better to optimize than maximize? Can you maybe break that down for us? And can you give us some examples?   Philippe Dunsky  07:41 Yeah, sure. I mean, you know, what I mean by that is, if all we do is say we want to decarbonize, there are many, many paths to do that. And, you know, we can say, hey, we're gonna, we're just gonna build, build, build, build, build until there's no tomorrow. And we could probably get there, doing nothing but that, but we'll get there in a less affordable way, than if we really think through the intricacies of what needs to be done. Yes, on adding, also on subtracting, so actually becoming more efficient in the way we use energy, relying more on consumers' involvement in the marketplace to achieve some of those goals. I just think there are quick ways to get to the goal, that ultimately, are going to cost too much and or create reliability issues. And if that happens, there'll be a backlash. And we'll never get to the goal. Alternatively, there, they're thoughtful ways that maybe aren't exactly the way we've always done things in the past, but that involve a lot more complexity and being able to wrestle with complexity and stuff. But ways that are focused on keeping this as affordable as possible, ultimately, for everyone across Canada, making sure that we do this in a way that's reliable, so we can always count on electricity being there. And in doing it in a way that actually involves some cooperation, as well.   Dan Seguin  09:04 So the electricity Council fulfills the minister's mandate to establish a pan Canadian grid Council. How viable is a pan Canadian electricity grid? Or are you seeing your movement in regional interconnections?   Philippe Dunsky  09:22 Yeah, so it definitely looks regional. Let me be really clear about that. And I know the original Originally, the name for the council was supposed to be the pan Canadian grid Council, as you pointed out, you'll also notice it, it was not it does not have that name. And there's a reason for that. And, and I will say, you know, and I've said this publicly many times, I don't believe that that's the right answer. We definitely need a lot more cooperation. at the regional level. There are a lot of opportunities for provinces to exchange more to continue exchanging with the US by the way, and this isn't, you know, we're not caught within, within our borders. So we have to do more on the cooperation side to keep costs down again, as low as possible to make this as smart and thoughtful and as achievable as possible. But that doesn't involve, you know, I love the old Coast to Coast Railway analogy. It's nice, it's working for railways. We're not talking about a single grid that goes coast to coast that's just not in the cards.   Dan Seguin  10:28 Now, for those who are not aware, can you tell us about your firm, its purpose, and what makes your approach unique, and particularly effective?   Philippe Dunsky  10:40 Sure, I mean, I'm thrilled talking about my firm. So these days, I spend so much time talking about look Council, which is kind of like my evenings and nighttime job, or evenings and weekend job. But my day job is running my firm, my firm is a group of over 50 professionals. Now, I think we're about 55 now that are dedicated exclusively to supporting clients in their clean energy transitions. And our clients typically are utilities and governments, increasingly large corporate clients as well, across Canada and across the US. So ultimately we work with utilities and governments that are in the throes of this energy transition, that are trying to figure it out. They're trying to find a way to help their customers navigate through it and a way for themselves to navigate through it, to define what the business case is for them and what their proper role is in it. And, and then we also have helped them in some of the nitty gritty. So, you know do you get customers involved on the demand side management side to reduce the pressure on right on the big build out? And all the capital is involved there? You know, what do we need to do to electrify vehicles, for example. So we've developed for some places, charging, charging infrastructure plans and charging infrastructure, business, business plans, strategies, investment plans, we work with, with our, with our customers in helping helping to decarbonize buildings through whether it's direct electrification, or hybrid heating systems without just the natural gas, depending on the on the need, we work with to decarbonize industrial loads, as well. And oftentimes, we're working with our utility customers to help them help their industrial customers decarbonize. So all of those things, and more and of course, planning out the whole transformation of the electricity system on the supply side, is a big part of it. That's a lot of what we do. It's hard to put in a single sentence. But the interesting thing, I guess, for us is, you know, ultimately, we're a consulting shop that is exclusively focused on the clean energy transition, we do nothing other than that. And, and I think that makes us pretty darn good at it.   Dan Seguin  13:02 That's perfect. Phillippe, your company emphasizes support in four focus areas, buildings, mobility, Industry and Energy. How were those identified? And can you maybe provide some specific projects or initiatives that have made a significant difference in the sector's?   Philippe Dunsky  13:25 Yeah, sure. And those sectors are, you know, 80 to 90%, of the energy equation, right. So they've grown over time, in a very deliberate manner, we started out working on the building side of the equation. So you know, what we call DSM or in Ontario, you call it CDM. Just to be different. But so we started out working on that. And then over time, we added mobility, especially electric mobility to our portfolio of expertise, and then built out from there, including on the generation and TND side, in terms of some examples. I mean, I'll be honest with you, we do well over 100 projects a year now. So there are a lot of different ones with a pretty large variety. But for example, I actually just came back from meeting with one of our clients, a large, large electric utility, where we've helped them to revamp their whole CDM approach. So that's, you know, from top to bottom, on the strategy side, on the regulatory side, and then on what the programs actually look like and how they operate and who they involve. In Ontario, we actually completed something I think is absolutely fascinating. I really enjoyed reading it. And that was a study of the potential of Drs. So distributed energy resources in Ontario to essentially keep the lights on, you know, we found 1000s of megawatts of exploitable resources there that you don't need to build because they're already there on the customer side of the meter. So stuff like that. We've worked with a lot of states in the US including California and New York designing, designing measure is to help their customers finance, the transition on their side, we've done a lot of work with, with utility executives helping them think through the strategy side of this, how am I going to actually the change management? How may I change my own utility to go from what it was in that steady state environment of the past 75 years to something that is a completely different beast in a very much more dynamic world. And it's focused on customer service and, and focused on transitioning the energy system as a whole. So, again, a pretty broad array of, of projects, but all of them. Absolutely. Absolutely exciting. And, and fascinating for me to be involved in and learn from.   Dan Seguin  15:45 Okay, now, wondering if you can speak to the importance of responsible and sustainable practices in the clean energy sector? And how has your company prioritized these principles in his work?   Philippe Dunsky  16:00 Yeah, sure. I mean, I mean, look, the world right now is looking to the energy sector to lead and to transform itself. And as we do that, you know, leaders have to have to walk the talk. So, you know, I'm, I'm very proud that most, if not all of my clients are doing that right now within their own operations. And my firm does that in our operations. I try to do that, in my own life, I've been driving nav for seven years. Now, it's a great way for me to, to, to lead by example, but also, quite frankly, to get a head and on the experience curve, and actually understand from personal experience, all right, what are the challenges of of EV ownership and what needs to happen to make it a more seamless process? So you know, that's on the personal side, my company, we're actually a B Corp. So we went through a process to be certified by an independent organization that looks at all of our practices, from soup to nuts. And in our score, our B Corp score has increased. Year over year, I think we started out somewhere about 80 Something points, and now we're at 119. So you know, it's just a process of continuous improvement, just like, just like all of our clients have to have to do.   Dan Seguin  17:12 Okay, cool. Now, we all know, there's always more every country can be doing to combat climate change. But it's complex. In your opinion, Philippe, how does Canada compare? Is it on the right track, and focusing its effort on the right initiatives?   Philippe Dunsky  17:34 Yeah, I think it's, I think Canada is, is definitely moving in the right direction. I think there have been a lot of very important policies brought forward over the past several years that I think, bring us forward. Are they all done exactly the way I would like them to be done? No, if I had a magic wand, would I do it a little bit differently? Probably, but directionally there. Actually, I think we're heading there. You know, that being said, it's a long and winding road. Right. And it will be for the next decade. So there will be setbacks, and there will be things that we're doing that are suboptimal. And that's a little bit part of life. So my job and the role I've kind of given myself and my firm is to help make that path as straight and narrow as it reasonably can be. But you know, recognizing that this is a big learning process and, and mistakes you're gonna make for sure.   Dan Seguin  18:31 Now, Philippe, what are some of the biggest challenges or even threats to achieving a clean energy future in the timeline set out by scientists and the government? How is your company positioned to address them?   Philippe Dunsky  18:46 The biggest challenges and threats and I'll decouple those questions, okay. Because I think that, from my perspective, there are enormous challenges. There's first and foremost, a challenge of time, right? Because what we're talking about if we're talking about, you know, getting to net zero or something like it by 2050. I mean, that's a single generation. So we're talking about literally transforming the backbone of modern economies in a single generation. That is, number one, because frankly, that's never been done before. We've done it within sectors, right, we've done we went from, from horse drawn carriages, to to you know, horseless horseless carriages. And you know, we've, we dumped manufacturer, gas and went, went to natural gas, and we've done individual changes like that before. We've never done all at the same time dealing with that and getting it done. The single generation is a race. And so I do think that time is probably the number one challenge number two challenge. And, you know, if you really take a take a step back here and think about what we're talking about it, it's largely from an economic standpoint, we're largely moving from optics to capex, and there's we're largely it moving from a context where whether it's utilities, or business owners or homeowners, today, we pay our bills, you know, we're buying fossil fuels, right, we're buying and burning the energy that we consume. And so that's an OP X thing. Now, what we're talking about is increasingly stuff, that's just all capital, if you think of, you know, going from a gas plant to, let's say, a wind farm, a wind farm is, you know, it's once and done all of the entire cost for next 20 years, or 95% of it goes in the ground on day one, that's moving objects to capex, it's a really big change. If you're thinking of it from a homeowner perspective, we're talking about, let's say, take my example, you know, I bought an Eevee, my Eevee cost a lot more than that my previous gas car did. On the other hand, I'm paying a hell of a lot less to keep it up to optics to capex. So there's a real challenge around getting enough capital for all this to happen, whether it's for large utilities or down to an individual homeowner or car owner, I think that's a real big challenge that we have a couple more, maybe I'll, maybe I'll stop there. And then the things that my firm is doing to address those, I mean, look, like I said before, on the timeline side, everything we're trying to do is just minimize errors, we're not gonna eliminate them, but minimize errors. So that that line between here and there can be as straight as possible, and as least painful as possible on the capital side, that's a very specific thing. But we actually do a lot of work developing innovative financing mechanisms that utilities and governments can offer to homeowners and business owners, to allow them to have access to the capital that they need, as they tried to save money on the operation side. So those are, those are a couple of them, anyhow.   Dan Seguin  21:57 Okay, Philippe, what do you want Canadians to know about the country's transition to clean energy that they might not already know or be aware of?   Philippe Dunsky  22:10 You know, I think, I think everyone is aware that this energy transition is really big, and it's gonna be really hard. Maybe the one thing I'll add on to it is, there's a lot of benefit on the other side of this. So a lot of benefit, you know, what we're talking about ultimately, is, is transformative in nature, it's the sort of thing that's happened. I'm thinking outside of the energy sector, but just holistically, these kinds of changes have happened a few times in the past 100 years or so. And they tend to always be ultimately about moral leadership to start. And so I think we need to think of this, first and foremost from the perspective of moral leadership, which is something that is one of the reasons why Canada has such a great, strong brand around the world, because we punch above our weight on the great moral issues of the times. And that was true when we went to help out Europe during World War Two, and that was that true. And we went Mulrooney led the boycott of South Africa under apartheid. I mean, we've stood up when we've needed to, that has positioned this country internationally in a way that I don't I'm not sure that we fully measure. This is one of those times. And so being at the forefront of this, I think is extraordinarily important for our country as a whole. That being said, there's also some really economic benefits at the end of this and flip it on its head to there's some real economic costs and risks if we don't do this, and if we don't get it right, well, one thing, one thing I'll point to, I remember about 10 years ago, being in conversations with some provincial governments about the possibility of governments eventually taxing imports of our products, if they're too carbon intensive, and the idea sounded a bit crazy back then we're recording this today on October 30 29 days ago, on October 1, Europe's carbon border adjustment mechanism came into effect for the first time. And that is effectively going to tax import of products from everywhere around the world based on their carbon content. So if we get ahead of this fast, if we succeed in this, if we lower our carbon content of what we produce, we've got a hell of a nice economic advantage at the end of it.   Dan Seguin  24:33 Now, what advice would you give to an aspiring entrepreneur or those looking to make a positive impact in the clean energy and climate sectors?   Philippe Dunsky  24:48 You know, my advice is it's gonna sound a little wishy washy, but it's just figuring out what you're great at. You know, everyone's great at something different so I have a hard time. I'm providing really concrete advice to people I don't know personally, but everyone's got their magic. Everyone's got their special exceptionalism. I think it's important to know who you are, know what you really like to do know where you excel, and then whatever that is, to the extent that you can bring that to service of a greater cause, whether it's climate, whether it's portability, whatever it is, I think that's just a beautiful thing. So I encourage everyone to ultimately lead a purpose driven life and, and lean on their own strengths wherever they may be.   Dan Seguin  25:35 Okay, that's fair. Lastly, Philippe, we always end our interviews with some rapid fire questions. Are you ready? Maybe. Okay, here we go. What are you reading right now?   Philippe Dunsky  25:51 Right now I'm actually sounding nerdy but I'm actually reading the CIA's 2030. Outlook, the latest 2030 outlook by the International Energy Agency. Absolutely fascinating read. If you're a nerd, like I am about energy.   Dan Seguin  26:04 Now, what would you name your boat? If you had one? Or maybe you do have one?   Philippe Dunsky  26:10 My boat? My boat is a canoe. And what would I name my canoe? I'm not sure. Maybe I named it the Power Canoe. One of the reasons I love canoes, by the way, is they're probably the most efficient way of getting from point A to point B on water. So I'm a big fan of energy efficiency and, and a canoe is just that.   Dan Seguin  26:31 Who is someone that you truly admire Philippe?   Philippe Dunsky  26:35 Oh, goodness, I admire so many people, I couldn't come up with a single name there. You know, I work with a lot of leaders who dedicate their time and energy and excellence to, for public purposes. And every single one of those I'm in deep admiration of, I'll maybe add one other group, the folks I work with here in my firm. I've never known a group of people as dedicated and passionate and smart and curious. As they are, they do inspire me.   Dan Seguin  27:05 Good, good. Okay. What is the closest thing to real magic that you've witnessed?   Philippe Dunsky  27:10 I'm from Quebec. So I'm a big fan of the circus, the modern circus, whether it's Cirque du Soleil, Cirque Éloize or les Sédois de la mayenne, they always amaze me and I'll always leave me spellbound.   Dan Seguin  27:24 Okay, next, as a result of the pandemic. Many of us are guilty of watching a lot of Netflix or other streaming platforms. What's your favorite movie or show?   Philippe Dunsky  27:38 You know what, I watched many different Netflix shows. These days. I'm just trying to think what's in bridgerton would be one of them right now. I'm really enjoying it.   Dan Seguin  27:52 Now, lastly, Philippe, what's exciting you about your industry right now?   Philippe Dunsky  27:58 What's exciting is the same thing that's exhausting me. And that's the pace of change. It's just an extraordinary time right now. And I'll tell you what's really exciting me is that five years ago, because this is all I do. Right? I'm a one trick pony. So I think about this every day. Five years ago, I felt pretty alone in seeing and understanding the pace of change that we needed today. I feel like pretty much every leader I speak with is very clear eyed about how big this is, how fast it's gotta go, the challenge that it represents, and the near the you know, the knowledge that we need to get going and get going in a big way. So that excites me.   Dan Seguin  28:37 Now, if our listeners want to learn more about you, or your organization, how can they connect?   Philippe Dunsky  28:44 Well, my organization's website is very simple. Dunsky.com. That's probably the easiest, easiest way. And if you want to connect with me, try info@dunsky.com or my own email. The simplest email in the world is philippe@dunsky.com.   Dan Seguin  29:05 Well, Philippe, this is it. We've reached the end of another episode of the thinkenergy podcast. Thank you so much for joining us today. I hope you had a lot of fun.   Philippe Dunsky  29:15 It was fun. Thank you. I love your questions.   Dan Seguin  29:18 Thanks for tuning in for another episode of the think energy podcast. Don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review wherever you're listening. And to find out more about today's guests from 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.  

More and more we seek brands and products to help us conserve energy, save money, and make a positive impact on the planet. Every purchase is powerful. ENERGY STAR Canada’s Director of Program Support and Modernization, Burt James, joins episode 123 of thinkenergy to chat ways we can harness that power. From energy-efficient products to how ENERGY STAR programs help reduce greenhouse gas emissions, save electricity, and even improve the quality of our lives. Listen to the conversation today.   Related links   ENERGY STAR Canada: https://natural-resources.canada.ca/energy-efficiency/energy-star-canada/18953   ENERGY STAR Canada on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/energy-star-canada/  ENERGY STAR Canada on X (formerly Twitter): https://twitter.com/ENERGYSTAR_CAN  ENERGY STAR Canada on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ENERGYSTARCanada/ 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 Think Energy, the podcast that helps you better understand the fast changing world of energy through conversations with game changers, industry leaders, and influencers. So join me, Dan Seguin, as I explore both traditional and unconventional facets of the energy industry. Hey, everyone, welcome back. Did you know that your wallet can help you reduce your energy footprint? Energy efficient products have become powerful tools and conservation and energy reduction efforts as people around the world become more aware of the impact their purchasing choices have on the environment. Consumers increasingly want electronic devices and appliances that use less energy to help save money on their energy bills, create a more sustainable future for people and the planet and are less wasteful and subsequently reduce greenhouse gas emissions. More and more people want to do business with brands that are just as concerned about these things as they are and they're using their wallet to send that message. More than ever, we have come to realize the power our wallets hold, we are dictating what is manufactured and produced because of how we think about and use energy. Over the last few decades and perhaps this last decade in particular, more of us are concerned about our own impact and contribution towards climate change. Enter ENERGY STAR Canada, a voluntary partnership between the Government of Canada and industry to make high efficiency products readily available and visible to Canadians. Providing simple, credible and unbiased information so consumers like us can make well informed decisions in the US alone ENERGY STAR and its partners have reduced greenhouse gas emissions by 4 billion metric tons since 1992. And save the equivalent of 5 trillion kilowatt hours of electricity. You likely know and recognize and have Energy Star products in your home already. Its logo has become a trusted symbol, particularly in the appliances space, but there's a lot more that they do then you may not be aware of. So here's today's big question. In what ways can we harness the power of our wallets to make a positive difference for our planet and what other opportunities exist through programs like ENERGY STAR to lessen our impact on the environment, and even human health? Joining us today is Bert James. He's the Director of Product Support and modernization at ENERGY STAR from the Office of Energy Efficiency. Hey, Bert, welcome to the podcast.   Bert James  03:10 Pleasure to be here.   Dan Seguin  03:11 Now. Maybe you can start by telling us how the ENERGY STAR brand came to be and why it's become such a trusted symbol.   Bert James  03:21 Thanks for the question, Dan. The Energy Star program was actually started in the early 1990s by the US Environmental Protection Agency, but was first brought to Canada in 2001. In an international partnership and our can through the Office of Energy Efficiency are the stewards of the program in Canada. It's a voluntary partnership between the Government of Canada and program participants to make high efficiency products, homes and buildings available and visible to consumers and businesses. The product program is probably the one that people are most familiar with. And it was the first member of the ENERGY STAR candidate family. There are more than 80 types of products available and 1000s and 1000s of products, we have over 1000 program participants in the product space alone. Later on in 2005. We brought in the ENERGY STAR for new homes program in 2017. ENERGY STAR for industry in 2018, Energy Star certification became available for commercial and institutional buildings. And how did it become such a trusted symbol, I think through consistent performance more than anything else, it's recognized by a strong majority, like more than 80% of Canadians know what that little blue star means whenever they see it. It's government backed, which I think gives it some credibility or at least I'd like to think so there are transparent and really strict efficiency specifications as well which makes the program reliable and the products themselves are subject to post market verification in that, you know, it's not just about what you say your product will do, but it's actually about how your product performs. So there are proven savings. The market is quite saturated I think with Energy Star products. In terms of a price comparison, there's no difference in Most product categories and by purchasing one provided that it fits your design style, you know, you're going to save money if you purchase an energy star product.   Dan Seguin  05:08 That's very cool. Now, how does your rating system and our guide fit into this equation?   Bert James  05:15 So the inner guide rating system does kind of dovetail with ENERGY STAR, but they are separate pieces. In the world of residential homes. There is an EnerGuide rating system that compares individual homes from an energy performance perspective against other homes and then issues a rating ENERGY STAR for new homes, by contrast, is actually a reflection of the energy performance as it relates to the building code. In the world of appliances. Energy Star has a certain technical specification or and I guess, to elaborate a little further on that each product must have a certain energy performance, whereas EnerGuide is more just a measure of that energy performance. It's not a standard per se. It's just a reading.   Dan Seguin  05:59 Thanks for the clarification. Okay, but 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 aren't multifamily. And in Ontario alone, nearly 700,000 households live in condos. Now, does this present a challenge or an opportunity for the Energy Star program?   Bert James  06:28 Well, I like to see everything as an opportunity then. So I would definitely put this into that category. I think the biggest challenge, if I may, is to kind of work within this situation where we find ourselves where we need to build more homes. I think there is a shortage of housing on the market. When we choose to build homes, we would like them to be as efficient as possible. And that's where ENERGY STAR can come in. From a certification standpoint. Many people live in multifamily homes now, or multi unit residential buildings or condo buildings. And of course, we encourage them all to use Energy Star products within their homes. But more broadly for whole buildings. We do have an Energy Star certification program for multifamily high rises in Ontario. It's a certification program for new construction that recognizes buildings that are at least 15% more efficient than those built to the provincial energy code and meet some other program requirements. But as we focus a lot on housing supply in this country, it is sometimes hard to talk about efficiency whenever we just need to get homes built. And so we you know, we see it as a challenge in terms of keeping energy efficiency in the spotlight whenever these homes get built, and also an excellent opportunity to promote the work that we do here within OEE.   Dan Seguin  07:46 Okay, the ENERGY STAR is mostly known for residential homes and appliances. But you're also in the industrial and commercial space. What programs exist to help these sectors reduce greenhouse gas emissions?   Bert James  08:02 This is a question where my answer might be long, I'm going to try and keep it as concise as I can. So there are a number of initiatives in both the commercial and industrial space. And I'll start with the commercial space energy star that has a tool called Portfolio Manager, which is a benchmarking tool. It's been with us this is actually the 10th anniversary this year is the 10th anniversary of the use of portfolio manager. And what Portfolio Manager allows you to do is measure your buildings performance as compared to other buildings that are in a similar class, it spits out a score and that score allows you to compare how your building will perform overall, in terms of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, a building that has a higher score consumes less energy and is more efficient in terms of keeping the heat in and so through the use of a portfolio manager a building owner can actually evaluate how their building performs as they construct it. But also if they were to do some retrofits to see how much better the building actually performs itself in the world of commercial residential or condo buildings. Portfolio Manager is obviously another tool that people could use but we also do have this pilot program in Ontario that does recognize buildings that are more energy efficient. So in the world of industrial players ENERGY STAR has two components. There is an energy star challenge and then a certification process. The challenge for industrial facilities is to reduce their energy consumption by 10%. Within five years, if you achieve this goal, you receive ENERGY STAR recognition and you can display the ENERGY STAR challenge for industry logo while 10% might not seem like a big achievement over the course of five years, the amount of electricity that some of the these facilities consumed is really quite substantial and a 10% drop in energy use can lead to some significant changes to the bottom line for these facilities. From a certification perspective, Natural Resources Canada recognizes the most energy efficient Canadian facilities with ENERGY STAR for industry certification. So industrial facilities located in Canada can earn the certification and display the energy star symbol. And it is done through an energy performance indicator that allows you to benchmark your facility's performance against those across Canada and the United States, it generates a score and those with the highest scores are eligible for certification.   Dan Seguin  10:28 Okay, what makes ENERGY STAR certified buildings unique?   Bert James  10:34 So ENERGY STAR certified buildings are, as I mentioned, in the residential space, the multi unit buildings they perform at least 15% better than the standard as described in the provincial energy code and ENERGY STAR certified buildings are just they are of higher energy performance. And you can feel it whenever you're in some of these buildings. And you can definitely see it through the control systems that are in place to manage energy within them. There are really some fantastic innovations happening in the building space with respect to heat and energy recovery. And these all help to improve the energy performance and ultimately improve the score through Portfolio Manager and that's what sets them apart is that they are higher performing buildings. You know, here in Ottawa, there are a couple of buildings that have recently been announced as net zero buildings whenever they are finally going to be built. That is the highest standard that we are looking at right now. But overall, you know, cut and dried, the difference between the ENERGY STAR certified building and one that is not ENERGY STAR certified is its energy performance.   Dan Seguin  11:34 Burt, are you able to unpack for listeners, what is the process to being certified?   Bert James  11:41 To be eligible for Energy Star certification, a building must earn a certain score through the ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager access to Portfolio Manager is free. And I want to be clear that it does not require an engineering degree in order to operate it, it is something that a building manager can come in and use if it receives a certain score of 75. That means that it's operating better than at least 75% of similar buildings nationwide. So the entire process is done within the portfolio manager tool. Once you register for an account, you benchmark your building by using metered energy data. It's asking, you know, building operators for the data that they already have, which can be entered into the tool manually, or in some cases that can actually be automatically uploaded into the tool. Once you obtain your score. If it is 75 or higher, then you can submit an online certification application, have it verified by a licensed professional and then submit it to Natural Resources Canada, and then the last step for us is just to review that application. And if it is certified, the building receives an ENERGY STAR deckle to display on the building and also gets listed on in NRcan's online registry.   Dan Seguin  12:50 Now I'm curious about your signature program, the Canada Greener Homes Grant. What can you tell us about it, and how retrofit factors into your work?   Bert James  13:02 So the Canada Greener Homes Grant was launched in 2021. And I think in government time, that still makes it a relatively new program. It is obviously a program to incentivize home energy retrofits in the residential space across Canada. You know, the program itself was designed to improve the energy performance of home so there is a focus on improving the building envelope and also some of the equipment that exists within the home. When I say building envelope, I don't just mean you know the walls I also mean the windows and doors. And as it relates to energy star to be eligible for one of the grants, consumers or homeowners must install ENERGY STAR certified products into those spaces. There's also opportunities to add insulation to swap out furnaces for heat pumps and there are other aspects. So the retrofitting of homes is a very important factor for us as we work towards, you know, a net zero economy by 2050. The building sector accounts for a significant percentage of Canada's greenhouse gas emissions primarily related to space and water heating and retrofitting those buildings is an essential component of how we get to net zero energy star certainly plays a role in in supporting homeowners by putting high performing products in and ultimately can help us down the road of consuming less energy and reducing greenhouse gas emissions in cases where if you are heating with a natural gas furnace, having high efficiency Windows keeps that he didn't and you will burn less gas overall and reduce your emissions associated with it.   Dan Seguin  14:40 Bert, more and more municipalities and communities are looking for ways to reduce costs and greenhouse gas emissions. What is the ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager and who is the target audience?   Bert James  14:55 So the Portfolio Manager is a free tool you know, it's run by the United States Ba, they are the ones that the custodians of the tool can have certainly modified the tool, you know, for our own context, the target audience for Portfolio Manager are building operators. And so they are the people who have access to the water consumption, the energy consumption, waste generation, all of those things come into the portfolio manager tool, and we, you know, we target our work towards, towards the building operators and the building managers to get their information into it, it is really quite something but we have more than 40% of all commercial space across Canada is already found in the portfolio manager tool, and that date that is increasing all the time. And we have some good news stories from provinces, municipalities who are actually mandating the use of the tool in order to demonstrate energy performance in their jurisdictions. So like I said, the tool itself is free, it is quite easy to use, and but it is targeted towards the people who actually have access to that information about how a building currently performs and how it operates.   Dan Seguin  16:07 That's great, Bert. Now how does the federal budgets focus on energy and decarbonisation, the economy affects your work?   Bert James  16:09 Well, it is my work in many ways. I mean, energy efficiency is a central component of how we get to net zero by 2050. I like to think that there are three pillars to this : decarbonisation, which is the actual, you know, elimination of fossil fuel build burning devices. There is electrification, which is the conversion of certain things to electricity from a fossil fuel device, but then there's also energy efficiency. And so the less energy that we can use in order to operate, you know, a building an industrial facility or a product to the easier it is to to electrify that, and ultimately here in the Office of Energy Efficiency, that's, that's our goal, we want people to use high performing devices, we have many success stories around this, you know, we the efficiency of a refrigerator built in 2023 is, you know, many multiples ahead of of a refrigerator built, you know, 25 or 30 years ago. Similarly, incandescent light bulbs are actually getting harder and harder to find, and at some point in time, they will likely be regulated out of existence. So you know, the energy is the lifeblood of our economy, how we use that energy and the efficiency with which we use that energy is, I think, going to be a major indicator of our success as we move towards a full decarbonisation of the economy and reducing our emissions from coast to coast.   Dan Seguin  17:47 Now has the main social driver to buy Energy STAR shifted from energy saving, to, let's say, planet saving?   Bert James  17:56 That's a very good question. And I would say, our focus is still on saving energy, all energy has a cost. And if we can reduce the amount of energy that we consume, then ultimately we are going to save some money along the way. In Canada, we have a very clean electricity generation grid. And so but there are certain jurisdictions where even within this country where we still burn fossil fuels in order to generate electricity, if we can consume less energy, we will burn less fossil fuels in those jurisdictions. But I would say that the focus for the Energy Star program remains on remaining within energy performance and saving money and through the savings of energy, ultimately, are we going to be saving the planet along the way, I'd like to think that we are contributing positively in that way. But for us here, the focus has always been on just increasing the efficiency of the products that we are responsible for and helping Canadians make smart decisions with respect to where they live, work and play.   Dan Seguin  19:03 Got a follow up question for you, Bert. What trends are you seeing and what are you learning from consumers through their purchasing decisions?   Bert James  19:12 We are seeing I mean, I think greener homes are an excellent example. To go back to that question. We have seen nearly a doubling of program participation in energy star as a result of the incentives that are available through the greener homes grant. So people speak with their wallet sometimes, and by putting Energy Star products into greener homes, we've seen a significant uptick in the purchasing of fenestration products or windows and doors within the ENERGY STAR space. You know, we are are very proud of what we've done in the lighting space in particular, because we you know, ENERGY STAR lighting at one point in time was it was LED lighting and I think before that it might have there might have been some other model But we have largely moved away from incandescent lighting entirely. So, you know, we see people who are interested in purchasing a product, the concern that we tend to hear from Canadians is around cost differential. So they might not want to purchase a product, even if it's going to save them energy if it costs more money. And this is where I really love the Energy Star program. Because if you're buying a ceiling fan, there's no difference in cost between an ENERGY STAR ceiling fan and another ceiling fan. And this is the same thing across products like televisions, computer monitors. And so people don't need much of a push in order to buy a more efficient product. The concern that they have is obviously if there is a cost differential, this becomes a bit more of a pressing concern whenever we start to talk about housing, because obviously we want people to buy high performance housing. But there's a limit to how much more people are going to be willing to pay for a high performing house as compared to one that might not be an ENERGY STAR certified new home.   Dan Seguin  21:04 Okay, Burt, what role does ENERGY STAR have in achieving Canada's net zero emissions by 2050?   Bert James  21:15 Well, I can give you the most recent numbers that I have in 2022. Alone, ENERGY STAR certified products saved enough energy to power over 320,000 homes for a year or the equivalent of removing 680,000 cars from the road. Improving energy efficiency contributes firsthand to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and is an important part of Canada's national approach to addressing climate change. The program supports Canadians in reducing energy consumption and improves efficiency across multiple sectors of the economy. The program assumes a multi pronged approach to advancing these environmental objectives from manufacturing, distribution and purchasing, obviously, as we have discussed residential housing both single family homes and multi unit homes promoting high efficiency and high efficiency performance in the commercial and institutional buildings and challenging industry to push efficiency even further. So I think ENERGY STAR absolutely has a role to play. It is an aspirational standard. But you know, through program participation, and through the work that we do with our various stakeholder groups, we have the power to leverage that brand to influence people to make good purchasing decisions that will ultimately lead them to, you know, reduce their energy consumption, reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, and and hopefully get us towards net zero by 2050.   Dan Seguin  22:37 Now, let's move on from role to goals. What are some of your own internal goals with respect to net zero?   Bert James  22:47 Well, you know, here in the Office of Energy Efficiency, Net Zero is sort of our shining star, it's the one that we're trying to work towards, we continue to push standards higher and hire on the regulatory side of things. To make products more and more efficient. Obviously, we can't push too far too fast. Because sometimes the products just don't exist to have an energy performance that we know where they need to be. And so we are constantly seeking opportunities to identify product types to improve the standards overall. I know we work in close and close contact with the US EPA who are developing new standards for ENERGY STAR for new products that are coming ahead. And so what we want to do is, is just, we want to do everything that we can to make sure that energy efficiency stays front of mind as we are making purchasing purchasing decisions that we're providing information to people about the importance of of energy efficiency, and really supporting what is a robust labor market for energy efficiency as well, you know, the greener homes, you know, to go back to that has really helped to incentivize the retrofit market with a focus on energy efficiency, I think we we should be very proud of jobs that are created the economic activity that gets created out of that because the environment and the economy are not distinct things, more and more they are becoming one of the same in terms of you know, addressing environmental challenges are is an excellent economic opportunity. And I think ENERGY STAR has a role to play in that space.   Dan Seguin  24:25 Okay, time for a little bragging bird. What are some of Energy STARS or the office of Energy's efficiencies greatest accomplishments?   Bert James  24:35 Well, I'll start with ENERGY STAR. Certainly, there are a couple of things that I wanted to point out too. One is that we will be sunsetting the ENERGY STAR requirements for most lighting products. This is to pat ourselves on the back Mission Accomplished story we brought in the ENERGY STAR standard, which was led lights and that standard has what was originally aspirational has now become the industry standard. And we are going to be decommissioning the ENERGY STAR standard because most products are built to it anyways, the overwhelming majority of lighting products that you find meet that standard. And so that's a very good news story for us. Similarly, the EPA has indicated that we will be decommissioning standards related to the performance of fossil fuel devices and burning devices such as furnaces or hot water heaters, because the technology for electric electricity or electric heating and cooling as well as electric water heating have advanced to a point where, you know, our focus is going to become improving that energy performance and, and getting away from consideration around fossil fuels in the world of commercial buildings. Another great story for energy portfolio managers, as I mentioned, is that approximately 45% of commercial buildings by floor space are benchmarked through this through the Portfolio Manager tool, you know, the more that we can get into Portfolio Manager, it's a bit of a game, right? So for building operators, you know, whether you are operating a school or a hospital, you know, a medical clinic, you can compare your facilities, energy performance against other facilities. And the more that we can put into Portfolio Manager, the better we understand the performance of our building stock and look at ways to that we can ultimately improve if I look at the Office of Energy Efficiency, certainly, you know, we've launched a number of very successful programs over the course of the years greener Homes has issued hundreds of millions of dollars worth of grants already, but something that I would like to to advocate for is that, you know, OEE also plays a key role of as regulator, so we have saved a lot of energy, and we've phased out some poor performing products such as light bulbs, but we use our regulatory role to support building operators to support industry to support manufacturers, and we have a couple of very well known products in enter guide, both the inner guide that shows up on your appliances and enter guide for houses. These are very well known and web and highly recognized programs. And nothing beats brand recognition whenever it comes to programs such as this.   Dan Seguin  27:13 Lastly, Burt, we always end our interviews with some rapid fire questions. Are you ready?   Bert James  27:21 Okay, I guess I'm ready as ready as I'll ever be. Yes.   Dan Seguin  27:25 So what are you reading right now?   Bert James  27:28 So I have to confess, Dan, that outside of work, I'm not a big reader. I tend to listen to podcasts. I'm an auditory learner. And so I love the podcast medium, what I'm listening to on podcasts right now, and a couple of things. I love current affairs. And so I listened to Current Affairs podcast quite a bit. Most recently, I, you know, kind of dived into a couple of different topics related to the use of artificial intelligence. And one that is, you know, I would say more of a guilty pleasure than anything else, which is just listening to interminable amounts of sports podcasts. So I, so I read all day, every day for work. And whenever I get to the end of my work day, I tend to turn that skill in my brain off and I tend to listen more than read.   Dan Seguin  28:17 What would you name your boat if you had one? Or maybe you do have one?   Bert James  28:21 I do have a boat. It is a canoe and the canoe’s name is Worth My While.   Dan Seguin  28:29 Who is someone that you truly admire, Bert?   Bert James  28:32 Well, the first person that comes to mind is my mother. Of course, I am a mama's boy, if you can't tell from that statement. My mother is 80 years old, and could write a book on how to fit 25 hours into your day. She is quite incredible. You know, Dan, just to just take a step back, I work with the smartest group of people I've ever known right now. And I look around me and, you know, not just within the management community that I'm part of, but people up and down throughout this organization, I really admire their commitment to the organization, their commitment to the work that they do, and the dedication that they show. So I feel very fortunate to be a public servant, and particularly in the role that I'm in right now just to be surrounded by experts in their fields, both technical experts, policy experts and just leaders in the truest sense of the word. And those are the so if I had to say pick anyone to admire would probably be them.   Dan Seguin  29:30 Now, what is the closest thing to real magic that you've witnessed?   Bert James  29:35 Well, I actually had - and you can tell me after the fact that this is something that I am not allowed to talk about on the podcast - but I had something truly amazing happen to me about a week and a half ago. I was in Algonquin Park, and I was fishing and I ended up catching a fish and he decided that we were going to have it for lunch. And so in the process of cleaning a fish, I opened it up and a live baby snapping turtle fell out of its belly. And it was the most amazing circumstance that I think I've ever been part of. And if that's not a podcast, suitable material, I've got lots of other experiences. But I cannot get over how magical it was that I happened to be on that beach at that time and to liberate it. So we named the turtle Lucky. And we put the turtle into a safe space for a little while, then we went back and checked on him for a day or so. And then the turtle had disappeared and had gone off. We assumed greener pastures, but that is the closest thing to magic that I have ever experienced. You know, but if that's not a podcast, suitable material, I've got another example for you.   Dan Seguin  30:49 Okay, now, as a result of the pandemic, many of us are guilty of watching a lot more Netflix and TV. What is your favorite movie or show?   Bert James  31:01 So similar to my answer about what I am reading, I don't tend to watch a lot. I spend my day in front of screens and a good portion of my day on camera leading meetings, et cetera. The most recent Netflix show that I really got into was Ozark which was, which was a pretty, you know, dark and brooding show at times. But I found it quite compelling in terms of television. I tend to stick to sporting events, most of the time. That's where my interest lies. It's not that I don't enjoy television. It's just that for some reason, sitting in front of yet another screen, whenever I've spent a good portion of my day in front of screens, doesn't really resonate with me.   Dan Seguin  31:48 Lastly, what's exciting you about your industry right now, Bert?   Bert James  31:53 Well, I think there is an increasing amount of media attention being paid to energy efficiency, you know, not just from a technological perspective, because there's quite a bit of information in the news right now about heat pumps and the possibilities that heat pumps bring to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. What I think is really exciting about it is that it feels somewhat like a coming of age moment in that the world of energy efficiency has been creating jobs for decades. But more and more, I think people are starting to recognize the potential that this sector has from a research and development angle, you know, the potential job opportunities that it creates, and both the public and social benefits that come with energy efficiency as well. And so there does seem to be a recognition of what energy efficiency can bring to the economy. And I love talking about my work, not just with you with anyone who will listen, and I really feel like we are at a turning point, just because of, you know, some of the environmental challenges. I think climate change being the challenge of our generation, and just looking at the enormous potential that exists within this sector to make life better, measurably better for Canadians and for people around the world.   Dan Seguin  33:18 If our listeners want to learn more about you or your organization, how can they connect?   Bert James  33:23 So if you're looking for information about ENERGY STAR, if you go search online for ENERGY STAR Canada will bring you directly to our web presence. If you're looking for more information about the Office of Energy Efficiency, I would counsel people to do the same. I don't often direct people to our website. It's not something that you know, is going to wow you but there is a great amount of information in there really quite relevant information. It can help people find incentive programs within their own jurisdictions. It can help people learn about the products that they want to buy or are considering buying. And it can help greatly from an education standpoint to help people learn about the benefits of energy efficiency in their home and at their office.   Dan Seguin  34:08 Well Burt, this is it, we've reached the end of another episode of the Think Energy podcasts. Thank you so much for joining me today. I hope you have a lot of fun.   Bert James  34:18 I did. I did. How should I say this? It's nice to be on the other side of the speaker. I listen to a lot of podcasts, yours included, and I love to inform myself in this way and whatever I can do to promote my work, which I am intensely proud of. I am happy to do so.   Dan Seguin  34:34 Cheers. Thanks for tuning in for another episode of the think energy podcast. Don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review wherever you're listening. And to find out more about today's guests or previous episodes, visit thinkenergypodcast.com I hope you'll join us again next time as we spark even more conversations about the energy of tomorrow  

What role do communicators play in motivating change? Specifically, how can they move their audiences to take action against climate change? In thinkenergy episode 122, we delve into the world of climate communication with Amber Bennett, Deputy Director of Re.Climate. Explore the driving forces, opportunities, and challenges of inspiring climate action—from bridging research to practise to empowering change. Listen in for an insightful conversation on shaping a sustainable future.   Related links   Amber Bennet on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/abennettyyc/  Re.Climate: https://reclimate.ca/  Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: https://www.ipcc.ch/ 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 on X (formerly Twitter) 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. Did you scroll through the news this morning? How many of those articles that you skim covered a topic related to climate change? I guess it was probably a few. It seems. Every couple of weeks there's a new story dominating the headlines about forest fires, hurricanes, floods, heatwaves, and more, both here in Canada and abroad. We are seeing firsthand the effects of climate change and As consumers, we are receiving information about it. Everywhere we look. Have you ever thought about how you are being communicated to? How is climate change presented? What wording was used? And why? And are their calls to action? How does it make you feel? think not only about news articles you read, but also about documentaries, podcasts, Hollywood movies, right down to your everyday life. Think about the newsletter you receive from your municipality. The assembly instruction on the last piece of furniture you purchase, or this section on your favorite clothing brand, website about their sustainable practice, communications surrounding climate change are pretty much everywhere and the need to be. In June of 2021, the Canadian government introduced the Canadian net zero emission Accountability Act, which puts into legislation Canada's commitment to achieve net zero emissions by 2050. Different companies across the country are making their commitment, much like we did in 2022, when we committed to leading the way to a Smart Energy Future by becoming net zero by 2030. The push on to stop the damaging pollution emitted into the environment on a daily basis, namely caused by burning fossil fuels. Scientists are urging that this is crunch time. So if you haven't already, now is the time to hone in on how and what you are communicating to your customers. So here is today's big question. What role do communicators play in motivating change within their audiences to take action against climate change? Our guest today is Amber Bennett, Deputy Director of Re Climate, Canada's first climate communications and Engagement Center. This new organization launched in 2022 brings together Canada's leading climate communication academics and practitioners, and aims to help communicators create strategies that inspire the public to support climate action. Amber is one of Canada's top climate communication strategists and capacity builder who works with groups across the country bridging gaps between research and practice. She led the groundbreaking Alberta narrative project and supported much of the foundational work to pilot and build reclaim it. Amber, thank you for joining us today.   Amber Bennett  03:54 Thank you for having me.   Dan Seguin  03:56 Amber, maybe you can start by telling us a bit about yourself and Re Climate How did you get into climate communications? How did Re Climate come to be and what does it aim to achieve?   Amber Bennett  04:09 Okay, I'll try to hold all of those questions at once. Well, I am based in Calgary, Alberta, which may seem like an unlikely place for some for the executive director of a Canadian organization or Canadian center focused on climate communications and engagement at Carleton University. But that's where I live with my family. And what to say? Yeah, I mean, I think I've been circling around climate communications for a very, very long time. You know, the the mind has a funny way of making sense of things in retrospect, but I started with a Bachelor of Science and then I moved on to a public relations degree and then I worked with the mayor of Calgary on the one of the I forget which numbered cop, but it was a Copenhagen. And I think that was really the first time I began to think about what, what is climate change and had a certain kind of exposure to the, to the, you know what the challenge was and what not. And when I saw I kind of went on, and I did a master's degree. And it was when I had needed to choose a topic for my master's degree when there was the catastrophic flooding here in Calgary. And there is this, like, amazing paradox where the, you know, Calgary Stampede, which is the epitome, I would say, of the, you know, kind of old boys club. And when that happened, when the floods happened, their motto was come hell or high water come hell or high water, they were going to, you know, produce the show. And at the same time, one of the readings I was doing as a part of my master's program was also titled come hell or high water. And it was really about the science of climate change, and why it is making it so difficult. Why is it so difficult for humans to kind of wrap our heads around it. So fast forward, I completed a master's, and then did a series of really interesting projects. I did some work with a group out of the UK called Climate outreach, which is focused on climate communications and engagement as well. And then started working with a group of people here in Canada to set up a similar center or similar organization that would focus on supporting climate communicators, helping to kind of bring together the research that was happening, as well as the practice. And so that's really why Re Climate it is set up to do, we're really dedicated towards advancing the practice of climate communications and engagement through research, training, offering resources, pulling resources together, strategy, and developing strategy with other types of practitioners, as well as convening networks of both scholars, as well as those people who are kind of out there in the real world doing campaigning and advocacy work and trying to, you know, communicate with citizens and whatnot. So, that's kind of where we're at.   Dan Seguin  07:34 Now, Amber, it sounds like Re Climate, is a very diversified organization that brings together experts in social science, Public Affairs, and science. What kind of professionals work together in this environment? And what does it each bring to the table?   Amber Bennett  07:55 Love this question. So Re Climate brings together I think I've said it research and practice. And so you have those practitioners who may be doing public engagement campaigns, they may be working for utilities, they may be working in local governments or other kinds of government, they might also be working in advocacy organizations. And so they often don't have the time, or I would argue the luxury of going into, you know, latest academic journals, or even, you know, kind of other thought leaders who are publishing in the field. Why? Because they're busy, they're doing the work. And so, you know, that kind of takes a lot of time to kind of go in and look at the research, track it down, make sense of it? They're also, I would argue, very few who have the time to do an evaluation, like after they've done something, what did we learn from it? You know, What, did we make a difference? You know, what kind of impact are we having, and similarly, just getting together with other folks, right, and talking about it and sharing what they're learning. So that's kind of on the practitioner's side. And so, you know, when we say we bring or convene networks of people together, we're really trying to do that, you know, we're trying to provide resources, synthesize, you know, research, both, perhaps, you know, it's public polling, or maybe it's social science, you know, what's happening in in, that's relevant, but also bringing people together to share with each other and learn with each other. So that's kind of that practitioner side. And, you know, there's also, I would say, sometimes a culture where people feel like they're competing with each other, you know, certainly within the charitable sector. So kind of, I think, for those folks who are coming in, who are kind of in the field, having that support and someone who's doing In the work on their behalf to kind of make sense of synthesize, pull it in together like yours, your five tips here, the things you need to do. That's extremely helpful. And then on the flip side, I think for researchers, you know, they're, they're kind of passionate, there's a reason why they're there thinking or trying to understand, you know, how to better engage people, or what's the right framing, or what are the values or whatever it is, because they're passionate about it. So by being able to kind of bridge from the practitioner world into a more academic or into a research field, we're able to just give people real world challenges. It's like, here's why practitioners are actually struggling with, you're an expert in this, please talk to us about it, or please, you know, this is the kind of information that they need. So, you know, kind of the practitioners, I would say, Bring the complexity of the real world, right, that we're dealing with real people, resource constraints, you know, various kinds of issues and whatnot, whereas researchers bring the kind of precision of being able to look at something with a whole body of understanding behind them to be able to kind of see, well, here's what may be operating within this situation, here's what we know about it. And here are some other kinds of interventions or approaches that we might be able to take. I don't know if that exactly answers your question. Maybe the scientists part, I would say they bring the public trust. Right. So whenever we're polling, you know, consistently, scientists come up on top as having high levels of public trust on climate and energy transition. And so I think that they bring that kind of authenticity. And, you know, they're not there, they're often unpolitical, right? They're not seem to be benefiting, you know, personally from talking about it. So they're really effective messengers.   Dan Seguin  11:57 Wondering if you can share some insight into what the average Canadian's knowledge on climate change is? How much do they know about the main causes and the path forward?   Amber Bennett  12:14 Well, I would say that Canadians probably know a lot about climate change. But what we measure, it's a little bit different. So when, and I would encourage folks to take a look at some of the reports that we have published on ReClimate.ca The one that I'm, you know, I kind of go back to was published this year, or maybe it was last year. But within these reports, we basically look across 65, or more, either private or publicly available surveys, or public polls or whatnot, and we kind of do it a roll up of okay, so it's not just one survey that has said, this is multiple surveys that are showing kind of trends and themes in in where the Canadian beliefs or attitudes or or mindsets are. So when you do that, and when we looked across, you know, 65, or so what you can see is, is that, even though you have the majority of Canadians that would say yes, climate change is real, and it is happening, almost half of them attribute both natural and manmade causes, you know, attribute the cause of climate change due to natural causes as well as as manmade. And so why is that important, is because when we get into the conversations around solutions, then without the kind of foundational understanding that burning fossil fuels creates pollution, which creates a heat trapping blanket, which is heating our planet, and causing all of these extreme weather events and natural disasters that we're seeing. Without that kind of clear understanding that burning fossil fuels is the cause of climate change. And when you get into the solutions, and what people actually have to do about it, the conversations a bit more, there's a lot of confusion, or there's a lot of room for confusion, which is kind of what we're seeing and I can talk a little bit more about that. So you know, I spend a lot of time in focus groups, and this kind of conversation comes up. So when we talk about solutions in the path forward, you talk about climate change, and you start to have discussions around what you are doing, you know, recycling will often come up, plastics will often come up. There's a whole kind of suite of things that people are doing, but very few people are able to name a particular policy or real intervention that you know, that will address some of the root causes. And we people on this podcast may not be like, Hey, why really. But you know, there are a lot of different people and for many climate change, even though they may be living within the impacts are the, you know, experiencing in their daily lives, they have many other kinds of concerns and priorities that are happening at the same time. So what I would say is that Canadians believe that climate change is happening, there is at least half that are uncertain, or would attribute it to both natural causes, and manmade causes. This kind of understanding of burning fossil fuels, the trapping blanket, you know, that's not well understood by many. And so they're kind of subsequently stopping burning fossil fuels, as a path forward isn't clear, as it could be, or, or should be at this point in time. And maybe the other thing I if you, if you'll let me, the other thing I would say is, is that, you know, Canadians consistently report, when you ask them very high levels of concern about climate change, right? Most people can see forest fires, you know, that's how we are making sense of what climate changes. It is through these kinds of experiences, either directly, or our experiences of seeing, you know, extreme weather and natural disasters. So people are expressing very high levels of concern. But if you ask, unprompted, what are you know, what are the issues that you're most concerned about? It often will address climate change as mentioned Much, much farther down on the list. Right. So, affordability and access to health care, cost of living, housing, there are many other issues that people are faced with and dealing with in their day to day lives.   Dan Seguin  17:18 Okay, see the term movable middle mentioned in reports and on the reclaimed site, what is the movable middle? And why is it so important?   Amber Bennett  17:34 Great question. And I feel compelled to say that I think that term movable metal is used differently by different people. I think within the context of, you know, the work that we do, it kind of comes out of, you know, some of the themes that I was talking about in the last in in the last question or last answer. It's this idea that, you know, people are kind of undecided. Or they're conflicted about an issue. So they could move either one way or the other, but they're not at the moment. oppositional? Right. So if you think about, you know, a broader population, there is a segment, you know, of Canadians, whose identities are really built around the idea that they don't believe in climate change. They're not going to support, you know, climate action and whatnot. There's also on the other side, a whole group of Canadians whose identity is built around me. I'm a climate activist, and I'm a climate advocate. And you know, and I'm an environmentalist, and so they're on the other side, but most of us just kind of live in the middle. Some are more well informed than others. But for the most part, people are concerned, right in the middle. They have they, you know, when they ask, yes, we want the government to act, we are highly supportive of it. But when it comes down to it, it's this tension around the fact that because they may not be well informed, or not thinking about this, they have many competing priorities. You're kind of undecided, or sometimes they're just conflicted about an issue. Right? Because on the one hand, as an example, yeah, I think we absolutely need renewable energy. We need lots of, you know, solar panels, I just don't want them in my house, or we need lots of, you know, solar, renewable solar farms. I just don't want them all over the landscape that I cherish from my childhood. So there are many things that you know are underneath that are operating underneath for people that kind of create some conflict for them. So people, when we talk About the movable metal, really, I think what's important is to acknowledge that most people are concerned. They want when they support action, but they're undecided, potentially about one particular aspect or issue of it. Or there's some other kind of thing that's happening for them that's creating a conflict. Or they're kind of uninformed. So, you know, I think that you know, why an example? Or rather, I'll back up that uninformed piece is particularly important right now, as we see more and more kinds of organized misinformation and disinformation. Right. So as an example, when I'm in focus groups, I can predict with very, you know, a lot of certainty, what are some of the kinds of key narratives that are coming to the surface where people are kind of undecided? One of them might be, well, EV batteries are actually worse, you know, for the environment than, you know, driving a car, or there's no way that we're going to be able to electrify everything the grids can't support. Or it may be that solar panels actually create more emissions when you produce them than they save in their lifetime. So these kinds of things that are very dominant are kind of recurring pieces of information. And when people who are not thinking about this a lot or deeply, as much as maybe you were, I are people who are listening to this. So when people encounter these, this kind of information or confusion about what are the actual solutions? They really don't know what to think. Right? So like a third of us sit within that category, right? If I actually don't know how to make sense of the information that I'm hearing, right, and I don't trust so much of it. Because I know that, you know, I know about misinformation, I know that I shouldn't be, you know, you know, trusting everything that I hear, etc. So that's kind of the deal with the movable middle, right? So they believe climate change is real and not climate deniers. They just may be conflicted or undecided, or just not, you know, as informed because they're not thinking about it on a daily basis.   Dan Seguin  22:32 Now Amber, why is it important for the average communicator, like those in the energy sector, for example, to better understand the strategy behind climate change communications?   Amber Bennett  22:45 Yeah, um, I think because climate change is a super wicked problem, and is really complicated. And maybe me rambling on for the past 20 minutes might give folks a sense of the things that, you know, we were trying to think about and grapple with all at the same time. And so I would say that, in other cases, although arguably, I would argue that information, probably doesn't work it in on any issue. But what we do know, is just giving people information, they're not, you know, people can't reason their way into kind of behavior change. So, you know, we live within systems. You know, we live within communities where, you know, we're surrounded by friends and family, we see ourselves as kind of certain types of people. There are all of these kinds of social needs and emotional needs that humans bring to the table, that climate change communications, and I would argue, probably any good communications needs to attend to. So this sense of belonging, right, so I belong to a community. Other people like me think and act this way, or I expect other people like me to think and act this way. Being able to understand even what the problem is can kind of create shared understanding so that people who are making decisions aren't making decisions that don't consider you that kind of shared understanding peace. People need a sense of efficacy, control in their lives, they need some agency, they just don't need someone making all these decisions on their behalf without any involvement. You know, people want to be good people. And to be able to ask questions and to challenge things that are going to impact their lives without being dismissed as a climate denier or shamed or whatnot. And people trust others for different reasons, right. So scientists are highly tuned lasts. politicians aren't big corporations aren't, right. But the ones who are often leading this conversation in public are big corporations and politicians. So all of those are the things that we need to attend to when we think about, you know, climate communications, and because it's such a complicated problem, and extends to so many aspects of our life. And to be fair, there's a lot of organized opposition and strategies to create polarization to create misinformation. There's a lot happening all at the same time.   Dan Seguin  25:43 Okay, let me ask you this, what effect does it have to all be on the same page?   Amber Bennett  25:51 I often give the analogy of an orchestra, right, where we all have the same song sheet, but we're all playing different instruments. And part of that is, you know, there is a role for the government in setting regulation. And there's a role for activists and advocates to be, you know, opening up new possibilities, holding governments and corporations to account. But actually, we also need businesses to be building out the products and the services and the and the things that we'll be using in our lives. And you need all of these different actors operating all at the same time. And, you know, to live, I guess, within an ecosystem, so I'm very skeptical of how one message is the efficacy of one message, I think that really what is helpful is if people are exposed to and have the ability to make meaning out of climate change, and out of energy transition through many different parts of their lives, and they actually have many different avenues to talk about it and to create, you know, a shared understanding of what they want for their future, or where we're going.   Dan Seguin  27:23 Let's move to electrification, and renewable energy. Cool? These are important pieces of the world's response to climate change. For those in the energy sector who have a direct relationship with electricity consumers, is there a certain messaging that we should be sharing with our audiences?   Amber Bennett  27:47 Such a great question. I might change, I might have a different thought while I'm making a cup of tea, you know, in a couple of hours from now. But I think that there is a very, goes back to the question that we talked about with literacy. And also goes back to some of the things I mentioned around people needing to have a sense of control in their lives. Right. So what we know from the research is that people's motivation to do something as a whole has a lot less to do with their perception of risk than it does there because their perception of their ability to act, and that that action will make a difference. What people really, I would say, based on all the things that I look at and read and whatnot, want is a place to act that makes sense. And that is relevant to their lives. So I think for folks who work in electrification, work in renewable energy, a part of what we need right now is both to fill in all of the pixels around, like, where are we going? What is this going to look like in my daily life? What are the things that make sense for me to do right now? And how are the things that I'm doing making a difference within, you know, the broader community that I know and love and want to make sure it's safe and prosperous? And all of those things? So I think what we're, what we need, in part, are those people who are responsible for infrastructure, for services, for that kind of daily life to start filling in the pixels of what is this going to mean? Because people get a little stuck on, like, blind faith. We're just going to hand it over and other people make decisions. People want to have a conversation. They want to have a space where they can kind of create a shared understanding, right, like a public imagination of like, where are we going? And what's it going to be like when we get there? And what is it going to need in my daily life? And so I think that there's that part, like, what is this going to look like? And then I think the other part is, what are you asking me to do? And how is it gonna make a difference? For me and for my community, Canadians are very generous, right? They're willing to do stuff, even if it doesn't benefit them, if they really believe that it'll, you know, benefit the broader community or collective good, they'll step up. But I would argue that we haven't done a really good job of giving people tangible, practical, relevant things that do make a difference. Neither have we done a great job of filling out the vision of what this is gonna look like, right? It's kind of a little bit like a cliff at the moment, right? We're all going to transition to renewables. And we haven't filled in, what is that actually going to look like? Right? Am I going to have a gas station at the end of my street? I don't know. What is it going to look like? That's what I would say is storytelling, right? What's the story of what this is? How is this going to happen? And what it will look like when we get there.   Dan Seguin  31:27 Okay, Amber. I'm not sure if you're aware, but Hydro Ottawa has committed to being net zero by 2030. Does this kind of messaging resonate with the general public? Are there best practices in how to communicate this type of message in order to influence and maybe even promote change in our community?   Amber Bennett  31:51 Well, I would say if we kind of got back to, you know, when we think about Canadians, right, so I think that you've got a little section of folks who sit on one end, who net zero by 2030 makes a lot of sense. They understand what Net Zero is, they understand why you've chosen 2030. They understand what getting to net zero, you know, even means, however, it's likely that a section of those people are kind of skeptical. Why? Because they've been hearing a lot of targets, and not a lot of action, you know, for many, many decades. And then, so that's, you know, that one group, right, we start to see kind of dropping, you know, belief that, you know, it's possible, or that's going to happen. And then you have that whole other group in the middle that I was talking about, where net zero means absolutely nothing. The word the language, net zero means, you know, I'm being a little bit brutal, but it's true, right, where net zero doesn't really mean a whole lot. And, and neither does 2030, or the importance of it. And I think, you know, I sitting in a boardroom or a meeting room the other day, and we're talking about targets, and it really struck me when the person on the other side said, we know that this is ambitious, and we know that it's impossible, but we have to say it, because it's actually what science requires of us. These are not a political target, it's actually a scientific target, that we need to reduce emissions by this amount by this period in time, even if we'll never get there. That's what science requires of us. So I think all that to say, targets, I think are very helpful for administrators, for policy makers, for business leaders, etc. To help, you know, turn the ship, and to help start getting the kind of resourcing and planning and whatnot in place. But for the general public, what they actually want is what we were just talking about, tell me where we're going and tell me what I have to do. And tell me why it makes a difference.   Dan Seguin  34:17 Cool, Amber. You were a co-author on an incredibly helpful document entitled, climate messaging that works, talking about energy transition and climate change in Canada, which outlines the concept of message triangle. For me, it was a simple takeaway that could be immediately implemented into any communications surrounding climate change. Could you share the coles note of the message triangle with our listeners?   Amber Bennett  34:50 I can, and I would love to. And I suspect that, you know, there'll be parts of what I'm about to say that begin to resonate with some of the past things that I've said or are connected to. So really in a triangle, the underlying principle is that we're trying to create a whole story or a whole narrative for people. And that has a lot to do with how human beings and how we have evolved and how we make sense of the world, we make sense of the world through narrative and through stories. And so when we just give people one piece of something, it doesn't satisfy the way that we have been trained. Since, you know, the, since the beginning to kind of make sense of the world. So what we want to do is we want to give people a challenge that has to either be overcome, or that we're at risk of losing something. So there's a challenge, there's a choice that we have right now that we need to make. And then there's an opportunity. And if we can hit each piece of that triangle, what we're doing is we're creating a whole story for people, which allows them to make sense of why are you taking my time? And why should I listen to you? So you know, as an example, when we talk about the challenge, you know, part of this is really, I think, being more clear about the cause of climate change. But also, what are some of the challenges that we're seeing, that are related to climate change within our communities? You know, I was listening to a CBC program the other day, and there's an entire community in Newfoundland, that's actually moving back from the water. And this is, you know, after the aftermath of Hurricane Fiona and whatnot. So, you know, some of the challenges that we're seeing, what's the challenge that we're trying to overcome? And ideally, I would, right size that at a community scale, right? So people feel overwhelmed when it's my personal individual problem. But if we can begin to talk about this as a community challenge, then people are much more likely to engage because they don't feel like doing it all on their own. Similarly, a choice, right, as communicators, if we're talking specifically to communicators, we often leave out the choice at the moment, what is the call to action? What are you actually trying? What are you asking someone to do? Is it voted a certain way? Is it a conversation? If it takes a particular action, we need something, there's some sort of choice, and there's some sort of action that has to create tension within this story, right? All good stories have a choice that has to be made by the main, you know, character, and then the opportunity. And I think, you know, part of what I've been talking about around, where are we going? What's it going to look like when we get there is that opportunity. So if we're talking about the challenge, is, you know, we're seeing increasing extreme weather, that's because of burning fossil fuels and pollution, the trapping blanket, our choice right now is we need to electrify and that means building infrastructure, the opportunity that we have is at a community scale, both for you know, ourselves and and for others. This kind of, you know, whatever might be the relevance of it right, we'll have a more dependable electricity supply. You know, if we're all in EVs, and we have backup, you know, batteries in our cars, when the power goes out, you know, you've got a little mini generator that you can draw on that gives you electricity, you know, through the storm or something, whatever it might look like. But that's the point is that we're trying to create a full picture for people. We want to talk about, what's the challenge? What's the choice? And what's the opportunity on the other side?   Dan Seguin  39:22 Now, climate change has been a hot topic for oh, God, at least 20 years now. Are there any challenges with keeping an audience engaged and interested for so long?   Amber Bennett  39:36 Yeah, there's actually a woman out of the States who wrote an article. Her name is Suzanne Moser. And it's something I'm going to botch the title but it's something like, you know, Climate Communications 20 Years Later: What Have We Really Learned? And I think that in fairness, I think we've learned a lot, right? I think most people understand that it's more complicated than just giving people a brochure at this point. And I think that in 20 years, we've done a much better job of crystallizing, what is it that we need to do? However, there's also been 20 years of misinformation, 20 years of broken plans and not, you know, unachieved targets etc. And I was chatting with a woman the other day and, and she's like, because I kind of feel like forest fires and floods and hurricanes are doing the job that we used to do, you know, which is creating alarm and concern and demonstrating like, this is real. And it's a big problem. So I think in 20 years, we've had 20 years more of all of that. But we haven't, you know, but, but rather, I would say the job now in this moment, is the pathway, right? And giving people that kind of those choices, that control, and that sense of agency, that they can do something about it. And we need to get on with the action part, right. So we can't leave people in just concern. Because our minds can only hold so much anxiety and concern at one time, amongst all of the other things that we're concerned and anxious about, you know, climate change is just, you know, even more dreadful, particularly, I think, for younger people. So we can't, you know, people can only stay there for so long before they start to kind of check out because, as I go back, you know, I kind of mentioned it in the beginning. It's like our sense of whether or not we or our sense of motivation, or motivation to act has a lot more to do with our sense of being able to do something about it, rather than the risk that it that it proposes or that it is, so yeah. So, I would say the challenges of keeping people interested or if you can't give them something to do, then, you know, at a certain point, you kind of have to just check out of the conversation until, you know, you get clear about what are you asking me, and I think that this kind of anxiety is a real problem. And so the road for them, this moment really requires us to get much more clear about where we're going in the pathway forward.   Dan Seguin  42:52 Okay, Amber, we always end our interviews with some rapid fire questions, and we've got a few for you. Are you ready?   Amber Bennett  43:00 Ready to go? Okay,   Dan Seguin  43:03 What are you reading right now?   Amber Bennett  43:05 Wine Witch on Fire by Natalie Maclean, I think.   Dan Seguin  43:09 Okay, now, what would you name your boat? If you had one, maybe you do. Maybe you don't.   Amber Bennett  43:17 I don't have one. And it would be a miracle if I ever have one. So I'm going to name it a Miracle.   Dan Seguin  43:24 Who is someone that you truly admire?   Amber Bennett  43:28 This is kind of really out of left field, but I'm gonna go with it. So during COVID, there was a woman named Trinny Woodall who used to do What Not To Wear on the BBC. It was like one of the original kinds of reality programs, like one of those. And, you know, I'd love to be more philosophical than this. But I admire her because her whole... a) she works so hard, but also she just wants to make women of a certain age or any woman just feel good. And I really just admire someone whose life and business and purpose is really just trying to make other people see the goodness in themselves or to feel better about themselves. So she's, and she's also for any one who's interested. I mean, a social media magician, like she's, she's magic in terms of what she did. She started during COVID and kind of as a comms person, like, Yeah, amazing. Kind of how she has set herself up as an influencer.   Dan Seguin  44:42 Okay, Amber, what is the closest thing to real magic that you've witnessed?   Amber Bennett  44:51 Magic? Yeah, this is hard. Okay, so just bear with me. Great start! This is not as rapid as you probably want. I'm moving houses. I bought a house. And there were two moments in like, one was do I put an offer in? Or do we put an offer in? And then there was another moment, kind of later on. And in both cases, I was about to say, I was going to pull back and say no, you know, I'm not going to go forward with it. And I kid you not, in that moment, the wind picked up. So in one case, I was outside and the wind picked up and got very, very strong where I was standing. So the first time you know, you can kind of blow it off. It's like, oh, yeah, okay, whatever. That was weird. But it happened twice. It happened a second time. And then the second time where I was, you know, kind of stuck. And, you know, wanting to retreat and I got a little, you know, scared about, you know, kind of taking the leap. And in that second time, the same thing happened, where the winds picked up, and they got a little bit stronger around me. And then they calmed down afterwards. And not in a like, oh, I kind of feel like no, it's kind of little, you know, it was very dramatic. And so anyways, I move houses tomorrow, so I'm gonna just put that out to magic. Not quite sure. It doesn't make a lot of logical sense. Why? Why did we do it? But we're there now.   Dan Seguin  46:26 Now, what has been the biggest challenge to you personally, since the pandemic began?   Amber Bennett  46:32 Yeah, I'm, like so many parents. And I would argue women in particular, the double bind of having to take care of kids as though I don't work. And work even though I don't have kids. And I think for a lot of parents that was the impossible situation and I don't feel that that's really gone away.   Dan Seguin  47:02 This next one I always enjoy. What have you been watching a lot more of on Netflix or TV lately? What's your favorite? In other words, you know, what's your favorite movie or TV show?   Amber Bennett  47:17 I love the Peaky Blinders. And I've gone back and I've watched certain episodes again, just because they're so delicious with the costumes and the characters and the whole thing. I'm, yeah, totally enthralled. Yeah, love it.  Okay.Now, lastly, what is exciting you about your industry right now. Um, I think that if anyone were to see my email inbox, they'd be very surprised at, you know, I think communion policy was the king for so long. And I think finally, we're at the point where we're beginning to understand that the public has to be on board, the public actually needs to have informed consent about so many of these choices. And we need a social mandate to ensure that climate action is the third rail, right? You know, if you're going to be a leader in this country, or business operating in this country, then you need to be a climate leader, and you need to be a climate business, it has to be fundamental to all of the decisions that you make, and how you and how you operate. Because science doesn't give us any other choice at this moment. So that's, so I think, the kind of realization that we can have all the technology and all the policy that we want, but if people aren't on board, then it's never going to happen. And so I get to work with very interesting people, unexpected from all walks of life, and you know, different sectors who are beginning to understand that, really, this is something we're going to work on until all of us and those beyond. For many generations, yeah.   Dan Seguin  49:12 Now, if our listeners want to learn more about you, Amber, or your organization, how can they connect?   Amber Bennett  49:18 Yeah, well, easiest is to go to our website, so Re.Climate, so that's reclimate.ca. And folks can sign up there if they want to, you know, make sure that they get more information on events, and we do lots of, you know, webinars and talks and we release reports and, and whatnot. So that's a great thing to do. And I'm on LinkedIn, and I'm always happy to connect with people on LinkedIn. So Amber Bennett, and I also share lots of things there. that I find interesting.   Dan Seguin  49:59 Well, Amber. This is it. We've reached the end of another episode of the thinkenergy podcast. Thank you so much for joining me today. I hope you had a lot of fun.   Amber Bennett  50:08 Yeah. Great questions. Great chat. And thank you.   Dan Seguin  50:14 Cheers. Thanks for tuning in for another episode of the thinkenergy podcast. Don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review wherever you're listening. And to find out more about today's guests or previous episodes, visit thinkenergypodcast.com I hope you will join us again next time as we spark even more conversations about the energy of tomorrow.  

Extreme weather, cyber attacks, and disruptive technology pose growing threats worldwide. And energy companies are at higher risk. In Episode 121 of thinkenergy, we discuss the urgent need for crisis readiness in Canada’s energy sector. Guest Melissa Agnes, CEO of the Crisis Ready Institute, is an authority in crisis preparedness, reputation management, and brand protection. With experience spanning NATO to global non-profits, tune in for her insight on how to fortify your brand for turbulent times.   Related links   Crisis Ready, by Melissa Agnes: https://melissaagnes.com/crisis-ready/ Melissa Agnes on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melissaagnes/   Melissa Agnes on Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/melissa_agnes  Crisis Ready Institute: https://crisisreadyinstitute.com/ 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 Think Energy. The podcast that helps you better understand the fast changing world of energy through conversations with game changers, industry leaders, and influencers. So join me, Dan Seguin, as I explore both traditional and unconventional facets of the energy industry. Hey, everyone, welcome back to the think energy podcast. Within the energy sector, we've seen numerous companies rise and fall in the eyes of the public when confronted by crises for which they were unprepared. As climate change, cyber attacks and other threats wreak havoc, energy companies from around the world are finding themselves more susceptible to dealing with crises on a regular basis. Here in Ottawa, we've seen our city hit with major weather events, including tornadoes, floods, freezing rain, major thunderstorms, and durational. windstorm in the last few years alone. So, take it from a company that knows - a crisis communication plan cannot be drafted and filed away on a shelf to collect dust. It's a living document that has to be integrated across the entire organization. However, emergencies and crises are unpredictable and rarely unfold as rehearsed. So our crisis program has to be flexible and practical. In a fast moving event, it is important to make sure processes are as smooth as butter. How a company communicates during a crisis has changed dramatically during my career. From the rise of the Internet, social media, smartphones and voice technology to name just a few. These new channels present opportunities to connect with your audiences, we are now able to communicate instantly directly to the public in the event of a crisis. In our space, Hydro Ottawa is seen as an authority which enables us to frame the conversation appropriately. At the same time, during a crises, all eyes are on us. And we better shine. As Warren Buffett said, it takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. The Internet, and the communication channels that come with it also present challenges, namely, information overload. Everyone is now vying for your attention. Given all the information out there, you don't want to just be more noise, you need to stand out. So here is today's big question. If 1 Transcribed by https://otter.ai your phone rings tomorrow, and you're suddenly confronted with a major crises, are you and your business prepared to handle it? Do you know what steps to take to mitigate that damage? So joining me today, I have a leading authority on crisis preparedness, reputation management and brand protection. She is the founder and CEO of the Crisis Ready Institute and the author of Crisis Ready Building an Invincible Brand in an uncertain world. My very special guest today has worked with NATO Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Defense financial firms, technology companies, health care organizations, cities and municipalities, law enforcement agencies, the global nonprofit, and many others. She is a guest lecturer at universities around the world and also sits on the Global Advisory Council for the Institute for strategic risk management. Dear listeners, please welcome Melissa, Agnes. Melissa, maybe you could start by sharing with our listeners your journey into crisis management, what's a crisis management strategist? And how did you get where you are today? Lastly, what does it mean to be crisis ready? Melissa Agnes 04:34 Okay, the three part question and I'm going to do my best to be as succinct as possible. So crisis management strategist- I view it that way. Crisis communication strategist, crisis leadership. Like I view the strategy part of it to say that it's not just reactive, right? You're not being simply reactive where you're being hit with something and you're reacting to something. You are- you need to be strategic in the way that you respond to crisis, as well as in the way that you prepare to respond to crisis. So that's the whole premise of being crisis ready, which was the third part of your question. So that's what a strategist comes in. And I'll add that it's not about, you know, PR people might look at or if people might associate it with PR and spin. It's not that at all. It's not about manipulation. It's about looking at the long term of what's happening, and essentially the relationships that matter to the organization, and looking at a crisis through a lens that says, 'What's the best way for us to respond now and over the long term", which I'm sure we'll dive more into intense conversation in a way that keeps us building strengthening trust. With your question in regards to what is does it mean to be crisis ready? The answer is right there. So crisis ready is a term that I coined well over a decade ago, because I was dissatisfied with the status quo of crisis preparedness, which is pretty much a through line throughout my entire career, as my career is based off of frustration and I don't like to complain, so I don't like complain about something and not provide a solution. So my career is always around, like what's happening in the world, what really, really doesn't just doesn't sit right with me. And then what can I do in my way to contribute right to make things better? So the crisis ready came from the frustration that crisis preparedness, quote, unquote, crisis preparedness, which the was the more common kind of terminology for it within our profession, or within the industry was about having a plan, checking that box off, that leadership could say, like, Okay, we've got a crisis management plan, or we've got a crisis communication plan, we're set. And I knew 15 years ago, 14 years ago, when I started this, that made no sense to me. So I turned the coin crisis ready to give it a specific definition, which is it's a cultural approach. It's not just about having a plan. It's about building out programs and ingraining them into the culture of the organization. So that every single member of every single team in every single department and every single division and every single region, has the skill set has the mindset and has the capabilities to identify risk and its onset, to then figure out what to do with it, like categorize it, know what to do with it. So is it an issue? Is it a crisis? What do I do? And then effectively responding to the 2 Transcribed by https://otter.ai incident or the situation in a way that, yes, it de escalates it quickly, yes you mitigate long term material impact, but more over that piece with crisis ready, that's very unique and very important, is you respond in a way that strengthens trust. Dan Seguin 07:45 Okay. Sorry. Now, this is another two part question. Melissa Agnes 07:50 Let's do it. Dan Seguin 07:51 When a crisis hits, the last thing we want is for a company to bury their heads in the sand. Having said that, is there such a thing as a manageable framework for effective crisis communications? Next, here's my other question. When might that framework help an organization deal with an actual event? communicate in real time and deal with stakeholders like elected officials, the media, employees and constituents? Melissa Agnes 08:25 Okay, so the first part of that question is, is there such thing as a manageable framework for effective crisis communication? Absolutely yes, because I teach it. That's what we do we help. So essentially, are Crisis Ready Institute exists, because there is a lack or there's a void of actually teaching the essentials for crisis communication and crisis leadership, in any aspect of our academic lives. We're not taught these things no matter what, you know, it's very, very, very rare. And if you have been taught, it was likely very recently, and probably not even to the level that I would really give it that stamp of approval, unfortunately. So yes, all of that to say that that is what Crisis Ready Institute does, that is a big part of what I do is I see complex subject matter and skills, and I'm able to kind of put them into formulas and frameworks and different things that make it make them just more comprehensible. Is that a word? That's a word, right? That's an English word. Easier to understand, easier to truly conceptualize and giving a formula for okay, it's like until that skill level is at the point that we want it to be, where its intrinsic, and it's reflexive and it's just like, something happens and you know how to respond. That you want to have those 1-2-3 steps that are actually applicable. So yes, and then this second part of your question was, I mean, the crisis ready framework is designed to be scalable from issue straight through to crisis. So obviously, we teach for the worst case scenarios. But if you can respond to the worst case scenarios in a way that, again, de escalates the situation quickly, mitigates long term material impact, and strengthens trust within the organization, both internally and externally. So essentially, strengthening brand equity, building brand equity as a result of the crisis management. Then if you can do that, in the worst times, you can do that - you can apply all of the same tactics, all of the same techniques, all of the same strategies, in issue management. And in doing that, so like the lesser degree type of situation, materially impactful type of situation. So taking that, and when you are able to do that, first of all, obviously, you nip issues in the bud, like really quickly. And secondly, the organizations that are really truly crisis ready they are less vulnerable, to crises and to risks and to, you know, the things happening because they know they have, again, it's the mindset, the skills and the 3 Transcribed by https://otter.ai capability to respond. And the frameworks that we have at Crisis Ready Institute are designed to be one scalable, but also building blocks. So you learn the fundamentals. And you learn how to apply them in different types of situations and scenarios with different types of mindsets and emotions and all of these different facets that play into crisis management. Dan Seguin 11:32 Okay. How vital is it for an organization to maintain their social licence to operate? How does one safeguard its reputation? Melissa Agnes 11:43 Okay, well, I think that you are the perfect person to answer that question. I mean, how vital is your social licence to operate, right? Like, that's reputation. That's trust. That social licence to operate, it's in the name, you can't really have a successful business in certain industries without it. And it's all about trust. It's all about - you and I were just talking about this right before we hit record, right? It's all about how much trust do you build prior to a crisis? And how well do you know how to respond to that trust remains and hopefully even strengthens as a result of effective crisis management? When it comes down to, for me, with the way that I see it to, like, simplify it as much as possible, is that strong business, solid business, successful business is built and developed on like, strong relationships. Right. So that's the social licence to operate, if you want to look at it that way. Crisis Management is about doing right by those very relationships. When it matters most when you're put to the test. It's all about trust. Dan Seguin 12:53 If the communications plan is a living organism that helps you navigate through any disruption. Is it safe to say that it's not about dusting off that plan that just sits on that bookshelf? Melissa Agnes 13:11 Absolutely. Things happen too fast. Things happen too fast things happen outside of the realm of what we planned for, or what we may have imagined it to be, or unfold as anybody who had a crisis management plan. And I'm saying plan, like, I'll use the words program and culture and skill set and mindset capabilities to talk about crisis ready, right. But if we're looking at it through the crisis, preparedness, going back to the start of our conversation, lens of like, let's check off that box. And let's just have that plan. Plans are linear, they're siloed. They're theoretical, more than they are practical, they become obsolete pretty much the second you put them on the shelf. And they're not ingrained. Things happen so quickly, they escalate so quickly, that to be looking around going like, oh, where's where's the plan that I think that one day, once upon a time we created, like, let's look at that and try to see. Already you're suffering Crisis Response penalty as a result of that, because you're not being effective with your time in terms of response. So anybody who had that type of plan prior to COVID, as an example, quickly, unfortunately realized and learned the hard way. How ineffective that mindset that approach is, so we really, really want to look at crisis ready as a program as a skill set as the mindset is capability that's ingrained into the culture of the organization. 4 Transcribed by https://otter.ai Dan Seguin 14:34 Okay, Melissa, now, let me ask you this. How can an organization transform crisis readiness into a competitive advantage? Melissa Agnes 14:46 That's a really great question. This is one of those things that like it's really hard to sell what I do - Crisis Ready - because effectively what you're doing is you're trying to sell insurance to people who, who aren't obliged to pay purchase insurance right and human nature states that we don't want to look we want to avoid, we don't want to look at what's challenging or what's scary, or what makes us really uncomfortable, especially if we're not thrown into it and like being faced with it in the moment. So like, life is good, business is good, why would you want to look for it? Or look at what makes you uncomfortable? And the what if the downsides of the what ifs? That's really hard. And one of the ways that I've learned to do that to to sell it essentially, isn't answering that question is looking at what is the value of being crisis ready? What does it do to the team, to the culture to the morale internally, what does it do with regards to trust. And just having that culture that you know, something minor goes wrong, but you have this culture that sees that as an opportunity to strengthen relationships and to evolve as an organization as a service provider, or, you know, a product creator. So all of these different facets of like, what it means to be crisis ready with the core values assigned with crisis ready are and how they lay out day to day, not just to effectively manage crisis when it happens, or even mitigate crisis from happening. But what's the value that it brings internally and externally to increase? We'll go back to the word brand equity of your organization, there's a massive competitive advantage in those answers. Dan Seguin 16:35 Okay, now, a little while back, I attended your amazing, it is truly amazing, a 10 week course on honing your crisis communication and leadership skills, where you stated, if I recall, that you cannot put emotion over logic. What is the role and power of emotion within issue and crisis management. Melissa Agnes 17:00 So you can't let's let's let's flip it, you can't put logic over emotion. So the crisis ready rule is, you cannot beat emotion with logic. So just to make that clear. Emotion plays a major role in any type of crisis for every person involved, whether you're the leadership team, whether you're, you know, the members of the team who are doing different roles within managing the crisis, whether you're an outside impacted party by the crisis, you don't have a motion, you don't have crisis for that emotion. Meanwhile, you cannot beat emotion with logic. So you're speaking to as a leader, as a communicator, in times of crisis, you stand up, you rise up, and you communicate with your stakeholders who are being affected by the crisis in one way or another. Those people who are affected by the crisis in one way or another, are highly emotional, right? They have emotion and probably very deep, very real, very deep seated emotion running through them. What happens to us as human beings is emotion then comes to the forefront we're emotional beings, as human beings, no matter how logical or cerebral or rational we believe ourselves to be, we're still emotional beings, because we're human beings is the nature of how and who we are at what happens is when those high intensity, quote unquote, negative emotions kick 5 Transcribed by https://otter.ai into gear they come forefront, and they kind of they cloud judgment. I see it as the heart kind of coming up harping emotion coming up, and like putting this cloud around the brain, where you can't just speak or spew out logic, because the emotions are blocking it. It's clouding judgment, it's doing all kinds of things that a lot of leaders stand up and in those times, they just, they think that they just have to keep hammering out the truth and hammering out the facts that keep repeating the same things over in a very logical way. But they're missing the emotion, the emotional relatability, or the emotional, intelligent effect of it. And so in order to be able to communicate and lead effectively through crisis, you have to understand, know how to, first of all, understand emotion, the different types of emotions that that we have as an experience of being human. Understand how those like most emotions reside in our bodies, how they work, understand how to anticipate the emotions of your stakeholders, to the most extent possible. And then you have to be skilled in the ability to communicate in a way that puts the emotion first so that you can dissipate that cloud that is clouded like that's in front of the brain. I'm like doing this you can't see me when I'm like doing this visual in front of my face. But you want to dissipate that cloud that's blocking that's clouding judgment so that then you can speak to the rational, then you can speak to the logical. But trying to stand upon times of crisis when everybody is hyper emotional, and just spew out facts, you are going to miss the mark, you're not going to succeed the way that you can and should succeed. Dan Seguin 20:11 Now Melissa, to ensure crisis readiness, how critical is it for companies to identify high risk scenarios? And pushing this further? Should we be looking at defining the different triggers and thresholds of impact? Melissa Agnes 20:30 I would say so, first of all, identifying high risk scenarios is a part of the framework for crisis ready. So yes, so for anybody who may not understand that terminology, it's really what we're looking at is your most likely high impact types of events, situations that can put your organization into a crisis. We all have them as human beings, we all have them as organizations, as companies, as brands, whatever, however you want to word that. So yes, very, very, very important part of being crisis ready as you go through the motions. So let's say you identify just, you know, five high risk scenarios, the most likely high impact types of events to that you are susceptible or vulnerable to as an organization. Let's say you identify five. Go through the motions and part of being crisis ready is to go through the motions and becoming crisis ready for each of those five. Now, yes, absolutely. A sixth event can come out of nowhere and blindside you. But the whole going back to mindset skill set capability and culture is because you've gone through or asked. Once you've gone through the motions of truly becoming crisis ready for all of those five high risk scenarios. When the sixth one comes in, you know, turns around and hits you, or blindsides you and hitting you, you are so ready, your team is so skilled, you have everything that you need, and that it takes to be able to effectively respond to that sixth scenario, in the best timeframe as possible. So yes, identifying them doing the work to better understand them. And then in that answer the second part of that question, in that you will be looking at what would be indicators? So, so yes, triggers and indicators? And what are the thresholds of impact? So you're looking at a situation, say such a situation A, and you're saying 'At what point would situation crisis 6 Transcribed by https://otter.ai Scenario A be an issue for our organization? And at what point would it be a crisis?' You're really defining painting a picture of what those differences are? And then you're doing a deeper dive with the with the team and saying, Okay, what's the difference there? What are the criteria? What is the criteria that really made that customer past the threshold of issue to crisis? So you're trying to understand to the most extent possible, what are you know, what are the different aspects that make something a crisis for your organization, remembering that a crisis for one does not necessarily translate into a crisis for all. Dan Seguin 23:07 Now, in times of major disruptions, like a power outage, or maybe even a cyber event, scanning your landscape is critical. Any recommendations on how companies should look at monitoring the social landscape and mainstream media? Melissa Agnes 23:28 I think it should really go back to you, Dan. I think you guys do a phenomenal job at this. I mean, there's a lot to look at, and making sure that you have your baselines set up so that you know what a peak or valley looks like. You can detect it. I'd also say it's not just, you know, people go like, should we monitor every platform? Should we monitor, there's so many platforms, there's so many this, there's so many that, there's so many hashtags, so many, etc. It's really understanding your stakeholders and where you're where you have presence, right, and where that presence has impact because just because something - so one, just because something goes viral does not make it a crisis. That's not the criteria that makes it a crisis. That can be a viral issue, and not a viral crisis, right? Or a viral issue and not a crisis. And then too, just because something gets negative attention in one platform, if you don't have your course for stakeholder like the people who really mattered to the success and vitality of your business, on those platforms, and those people never hear about it, you might just have a whole bunch of haters that just aren't getting any traction. This is also about understanding what you're monitoring where, you're monitoring and why you're monitoring those, what in those squares. And then I think a third piece, I think that was two things. A third piece that I would add that is really understanding and I think this is a lot of where companies are getting it wrong right now - is understanding what is happening in the world that you transformations, the evolutions that are happening in the world and how they may or may not impact your relationship with your stakeholders, your relationship with your brand, the reputation of your organization, and to look at and be like, Oh, that's, you know, this conversation, this societal conversation or this Hot Topic doesn't apply to us to just look at something and be like, No, it doesn't apply to us without doing a deeper dive into how it might actually apply to you and how it might actually be important to the people who are important to your business is something that a lot of leaders, a lot of companies are missing the mark on right now. Dan Seguin 25:39 Cool. Melissa, can you share with us some simple takeaways, for example, what are some of the biggest and most common mistakes an organization should avoid? Melissa Agnes 25:52 7 Transcribed by https://otter.ai One of them is what we just said. Some other ones, I'll go to what we call at Crisis Ready Institute with call the CRP- the Crisis Response Penalty. So that term came out of my book, as I was writing my book, and what we're looking at there is, the longer you take to effectively respond, and I'll define what effective response is in a second. So the longer you take to effectively respond to a crisis, the more pressing credibility, you destroy the more ownership of the narrative you lose, and the more material impact you suffer. So that is the crisis response penalty, it is the penalties or the consequences of not responding properly. And effective response requires the right actions to be taken to actually fix remedy sold for you know, stop the bleeding, right the wrongs, etc, while you simultaneously communicate the way that you need to communicate and with whomever you need to be communicating with. And all of that has to happen. So actions and communications have to happen in the right timeline, and simultaneously. So if you falter on any one of those, then you're going to fail in your crisis management. And one of the biggest, most common mistakes to avoid so specifically to answer that it happened specifically to answer your question is the communication piece, because for the reasons that we've kind of already just highlighted, which are the vulnerability, the the fact that it's so uncomfortable, the fact that it's so vulnerable, the fact that people haven't been taught how to communicate with high EQ so that you can communicate through the emotions and actually resonate with the people you need to resonate with, so that they trust you and they follow your leadership? So yeah, I mean, we could go on and on and on, and on and on talking about the pitfalls to avoid. But even just looking at it as a framework of that crisis response penalty, what that means, what is involved in making sure you don't suffer a crisis response penalty, and making sure that your team has, again, the mindset, the skill set and the capability to not make those mistakes. Dan Seguin 28:06 Cool. That's a great segue, Melissa. Before signing off here, I'm hoping you can maybe share what are some of the requirements for a strong and effective narrative during a crises, but also ways to ensure we maintain that consistent tone, and stay on message. Melissa Agnes 28:29 I mean, we there's a formula that we use at Crisis Ready Institute, which is an it would take about, yeah, we could go into detail in it if we wanted to, but we teach it, it takes a while. But we really want to look at validate understanding emotions, validating those motions, relating to those emotions, and then coming in with your logic. And when you come in with your logic or your rationale, and you know, the directives and all the things that are very cerebral versus emotional, you want to make sure that you're having this balance of providing reassurance, providing hope, and having the courage to hold that space, that uncomfortable space, where the emotion sets. So as a framework, super high level, that's what you want to be making sure you're hitting, and I want to make sure that I answer your question properly. So strong narrative. So having that, having that framework will help to keep you addressing the things that are important to address that a lot of times leaders and communicators don't feel comfortable doing so they avoid them, which creates CRP Crisis Response penalty. And when you're doing that, you're doing that balance of risk providing reassurance, and hope and courage you're looking at. So just say, where you said I had to help maintain a consistent tone and stay on message. That's where you make sure that you're always checking in you're doing that you also want to make 8 Transcribed by https://otter.ai sure, so part of that is understanding what actually want what actually matters to people and making sure you're hitting those points, but also anticipating, anticipating the questions, anticipating the concerns, anticipating the fears and all of these, you know, things that we can anticipate if we take the time and put the attention to doing that, and making sure that you're getting ahead of the things that you can get ahead of, so that you're not always playing catch up. Dan Seguin 30:27 Okay, very cool. Melissa, we always end our interviews with some rapid fire questions. Are you ready? Melissa Agnes 30:35 I'm ready. Let's do it. Dan Seguin 30:37 Now, maybe you could start us off by sharing with our listeners. What are you reading right now? Melissa Agnes 30:44 I actually just finished reading it. It's called The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks and I highly, highly, highly recommend it. Dan Seguin 30:50 Okay, next one, Melissa. Who is someone that you admire? Melissa Agnes 30:55 I admire a lot of people. My significant other I admire him greatly. People on my team I admire greatly. There's a lot of people that I admire. Dan Seguin 31:05 Okay. What is your favorite movie or show? Melissa Agnes 31:09 On right now? Oh, man. I mean, I would say like Friends to me is like my all time favorite. What have we watched recently? We watched - I'm so bad with names and remembering this stuff. Silo was good. Shrinking was good. There was one recently there's one with Amanda Seyfried that I really enjoyed. I was sick last week and I like binged it over the weekend because I just got better. That one was called the Crowded Room. Yeah, I think there's a bunch of good things out right now. Oh, we just watched over the weekend we watched it's a movie about dogs, what's it called - Strays! With their like the voices of ...I don't know but strays, however, I will say that it looks like it's it's family friendly. But it is not. Don't let your kids watch it. It's very adult friendly. But it's hilarious. Dan Seguin 32:03 Okay, next one, aside from necessities. What one thing could you not go without in a day? 9 Transcribed by https://otter.ai Melissa Agnes 32:12 Okay this sounds so corny but emotional connection with my significant other. We travel a lot so I think checking in with each other, like just tapping in and making sure that - he's different from me in that I kind of get my good mornings and my good nights and things like that. I don't think I could go without those. Dan Seguin 32:30 Lastly, what is exciting you about your industry right now. Melissa Agnes 32:35 Oh, exciting, and that frustrated me. Um, the thing that I'm working on right now I'm working on, you know, I'm calling it my quote unquote, next big thing. That's really exciting to me. So new content, new things that are coming, that I think will, again, stemmed from a frustration in the world. And we touched a little bit on some of it during this conversation, but the, um, it'll be my next book. It'll be my next TEDx Talk. It'll be a whole bunch of things. And that's, that's kind of keeping me fired up. I'm very excited about that. Dan Seguin 33:06 Well, Melissa, this is it. We've reached the end of another episode of the Think Energy podcast. Now if our listeners want to learn more about you, your organization, how can they connect? Melissa Agnes 33:19 Melissa Agnes, I'm on social. I'm primarily on LinkedIn, definitely. IG definitely. That's pretty much it. Where I'm like, actually active and then crisisreadyinstitute.com Or just crisisready.com. You can find all kinds of stuff there as well as to connect with me. Dan Seguin 33:36 Again, Melissa, thank you very much for joining us today. I hope you had a lot of fun. Melissa Agnes 33:41 I did. Thanks, Dan. Thanks for having me. Dan Seguin 33:44 Cheers. 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 will join us again next time as we spark even more conversations about the energy of tomorrow.