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Is Renewable Energy Cost-Effective? · How To Protect The Ocean

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Are you up to date on what's happening with renewable energy? It is a
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fascinating industry that is changing just like any other
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tech space at a rapid, rapid pace. The problem is
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a lot of the news and media that's coming out is based on
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what happened 10 years ago or even 20 years ago. And that
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is a problem because that is affecting how people see renewable
0:21
energy in the future. even though behind the
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scenes, renewable energy is increasing in every country.
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It's a really interesting thing that we're going to talk about on today's episode, because I
0:32
have Mark Zacharias, who is the executive director of Clean
0:35
Energy Canada. He is here to talk about an article that was written on
0:38
the Fraser Institute website, which is not really known as
0:42
the best type of information. And he had some comments on an
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article that talked about how renewable energy is going to be a
0:48
lot more expensive than we think. He refutes that. We talk
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about it on today's episode. So this is the How to Protect the Ocean podcast.
0:55
Let's start the show. Hey,
1:00
everybody, welcome back to another exciting episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. I'm
1:03
your host, Angelo. And this is the podcast where you find out what's happening with the ocean, how
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2:02
speakupforblue.com forward slash newsletter for that
2:06
information. All right. We're talking to Mark Zacharias, Executive
2:10
Director of Clean Energy Canada today. He's going to talk about
2:13
an article that he commented on. I found his article on LinkedIn or
2:16
his commentary on LinkedIn basically saying, hey, look, this article
2:20
is saying a lot of stuff, but it's a lot of the information is outdated. They're just
2:23
kind of bringing it back. But there's been a lot of advancements over the last 10, five,
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even two, three years. And that we're really progressing on.
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In fact, there are some governments in Canada, provincial governments
2:35
that have actually been accelerating their investment and their projects on
2:39
renewable energies, even though when they first came into power, the
2:43
Ontario Conservatives were not having it. They cancelled a
2:46
bunch of contracts, but now they've actually increased it. And we also talk
2:50
about the carbon tax. Oh, oh, the
2:53
carbon tax. It is the bane of existence for a lot of us, but
2:56
it's done its job. We talk about how it's done its job. And Mark
3:00
also talks about what could happen in the future if the
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new government that comes in in October or whenever the
3:06
next Canadian election is, will that carbon tax be there? And
3:10
if it's not, what will happen? And what
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do we need to worry about if we need to worry about anything at all? So we're gonna talk
3:16
all about that this interview, and this is Mark Zacharias, Executive
3:20
Director of Clean Energy Canada, talking about the article
3:23
and carbon tax. Enjoy, and I'll talk to you after. Hey
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Mark, welcome to the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. Are you ready to
3:34
Right on. I'm so excited about this. Mark, you and I
3:37
have known each other for a long time. We actually shared the same supervisor
3:41
for our graduate work, believe it or not, way back in the day for both of us.
3:45
And this is really fun because right now
3:48
we're going to be talking about clean energy. There was an article that was put on
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a website, the Fraser Institute, that said clean energy is going
3:55
to cost a lot of money. And you had some comments on that on
3:58
LinkedIn. And I asked you, hey, let's talk about it on the podcast, because
4:01
I want people to hear some of the stuff that goes on and some of the information
4:05
that was used, some of the data that was using that information. It
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was, you know, used from like 19 years ago, as you mentioned before. And
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so I want to talk about what the new information is, what your comments
4:16
are, and where we should be thinking about renewable energy in the future,
4:19
especially some of the myths that are going on about renewable energy and
4:23
the costs and sort of what it's going to do to our grid and everything. So
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we're going to get into all that, but before we do, Mark, can you just let us know who you
4:31
Thanks, Andrew. My name is Mark Zacharias. I am
4:35
the Executive Director of Clean Energy Canada. We are a
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climate and clean energy think tank based out of Simon Fraser University, and
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And it's a great organization too. I love going
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on your website. You always have useful tips and strategies and
4:51
just like, it almost explains the carbon tax
4:55
so well. We had Jana on a number of months ago. We
4:58
talked about the carbon tax. We talked about heat exchanger programs in Canada, but
5:02
we're gonna talk more today about an article
5:06
that was put out by the Fraser Institute. Can you just tell us a little
5:12
Yeah, there's been a number of commentators recently that have basically
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put out three kind of different arguments around
5:20
renewable energy and focusing a little bit on British Columbia,
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but really they're relevant Canada wide and globally. The
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first one is that renewable energy costs too much and it's intermittent.
5:31
So therefore it makes grids less reliable and it drives up costs for
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the consumer at the end of the day, which you pay in your electricity rate. So that's kind
5:37
of the first argument. The second one is that
5:41
climate policies will break the grid. So this is things
5:44
like EV sales mandates. It's things like heat pump mandates. It's
5:49
banning natural gas and new developments that all of this. adds
5:53
more stress to the electricity grid and will eventually overwhelm it
5:56
or again, drive up costs. I think the third argument you're
6:00
seeing from a lot of groups across Canada is that Canadian utilities
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do import a lot of power in certain situations. The
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suggestion is that by importing power, this means that you
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have some type of structural electricity deficit. Again,
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we want to respond to all of these because You know, there's
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nuggets of truth around all of these and there's different examples worldwide where
6:22
these things have happened. But, you know, right now in this day
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and time around the globe, most of these are
6:31
Right. And I think one of the things that really bothers
6:34
me about this type of information, especially around renewable
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energy, fossil fuels, it seems like the messages are
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corrupted on purpose. It seems like we've known from
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the past, like from climate change and the climate change
6:49
messaging coming from the decades past that we know even
6:53
oil companies have come out and said, yes, we actually perpetuated those climate
6:57
denial types of information and that climate change didn't exist and
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it was all a scheme done by
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environmentalists and so forth. And even now with renewable energy,
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I hear a lot of friends and family talk about renewable energy and
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you hear those myths that
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just continue to come up and that misinformation that continues to come up and
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up and up. Like the information that you talked about,
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that some of the stuff is true, but also it's blown out of proportion or it's
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not using updated data. Where's that information coming?
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You know, there's a couple of points to make, and I think you've had
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a very good set up for this conversation that, you
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know, a lot of the information that people have in their heads that they've heard are,
7:40
you know, are things that were, again, relevant, you know, 10 or 15 years ago.
7:44
You know, people constantly refer back to Kathleen Wynne and
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the Ontario government around renewable deployment, which was almost 10 years
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ago. And again, you know, that was done in a way where technology was
7:54
not cost effective and the rate design program actually drove
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up costs for consumers. So people remember that and they
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keep coming back to kind of what's transpired. The other part that
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we notice a lot and more recently is that renewable energy,
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EVs, heat pumps, they've all become part of the culture wars. And
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you're either on TVV or Team Renewable Energy,
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or you're not. And the reality is that if you look at
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the US, for example, you know, the states that
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have the five highest renewable and solar shares in
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their electricity system, You know, they've got Republican governors, they've
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been Republican held. So, you know, what you're seeing on
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the ground is very different than the stories that are being told
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in the media and on podcasts and other
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It is, it is interesting and but it's also it's frustrating. Sometimes,
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for me to continue to hear this kind of stuff and you
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want as you want the information coming forward and that's what I love about your
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organization is that it provides that information. And it's
8:58
like, you're an organization that just puts
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out the information and for anybody to read it. And I really enjoy how
9:05
it's disseminated because it makes it so easy to understand. Because
9:09
it can be complex, renewable energy and just energy sector
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in general, especially here in Canada. There's a lot of
9:15
culture involvement in that and history, good
9:19
and bad. And it's nice to be able to find an
9:23
organization that's ready to put out that information that's truthful and
9:26
updated and follows that. I feel like we don't have
9:30
enough of that. So thank you for you and your staff and
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your team to be able to do that. Now let's sort
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of get into this article. You mentioned those three points. You had some
9:40
three points like rebuttals in the end. So let's start with
9:44
the beginning. That's that it drives up cost, right? Renewable
9:51
Yeah. And you know our experience and looking
9:54
worldwide in jurisdictions that are moving their electricity grids off
9:58
of coal and natural gas and other fossil fuels has
10:02
been actually the opposite. And let's look at
10:05
some jurisdictions. South Australia is a great example. their
10:09
electricity grid 10 years ago was almost exclusively fossil-powered, natural
10:13
gas and coal. Since then, because they don't have a
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lot of domestic reserves of coal, they had to import a lot of their energy, they
10:21
made a conscious decision over multiple premiers during this time
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to actually switch to a renewable grid. Right
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now, their grid is 75% wind and solar. and
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they have a very large proportion of battery storage. And then what they've been
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able to do is they've been able to commit that their grid
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will be 100% renewable powered, and that's all solar, all grid, by
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2027. And, you know, it's remarkable kind
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of what's happened there. The other ones I would look at is some
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of the U.S. states, like Iowa is a classic example. So
10:53
they went all in wind a couple of years ago. So 55% of
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their electricity grid is now powered by wind. And
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that's a massive share. And again, their electricity costs
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are 25% less than the U.S. average. Even
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Texas, which has a 37% solar and wind
11:11
share in their electricity system. their electricity costs, again,
11:15
25% less than the U.S. average. So you can actually do it. And
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even if you look here at home in Canada, look over at Alberta. There
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was a renewable procurement a couple of years ago in Alberta, and
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they got power bids coming in around $0.05 a kilowatt hour. And,
11:30
you know, that's remarkable. And again, that's the power that's produced. But if
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you look at the domestic Alberta electricity rate, you know, it's
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almost 26 cents kilowatt hours. The delta between what
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you can produce that versus what you can sell to the retail consumer has
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a great opportunity to make money. So there are
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examples all over the world. And, you know, What I think
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people point to is they point to the examples that don't work, or
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where things have gone wrong, or where there's extenuating circumstances. Everybody
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points to Germany, going, oh my God, look at electricity costs in Germany. A
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couple of things happen there. One is they shut down nuclear plants. Two
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is they are based in an EU electricity market that
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has a lot of peculiarities to it. what
12:14
happens is it can drive up electricity rates. Then they also point
12:18
to the war in Ukraine where Germany had made a bet on Russian gas
12:21
and they had to get off fairly quickly. That's an example. Another
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one people point to is California. Californians pay about
12:30
$0.30 a kilowatt hour US for power, which is astronomical. Compare
12:35
that to the Canadian average around $0.15 or $0.16 a
12:39
Canadian, and there's quite a difference in that. And again, you know,
12:42
there's a whole bunch of structural issues kind of behind why
12:46
those power rates are so high. Some of them historical, some of
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the more recent, you know, the more recent ones are that they are
12:52
having to rebuild their entire electricity grid because of climate
12:55
change and in wildfires. So, you know, all those costs get
12:59
put back on the right pair. And so, you know, the
13:03
answer at the end of the day is complicated. So the bottom line though is
13:06
if you do it it right if you plan ahead and if you
13:09
actually have all your facts together and everything
13:13
lined up, you can build renewables into your grid and you can
13:16
save money, address affordability, you can attract industry, you can do
13:19
all sorts of things right. Maybe the last thing I'll say before
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you jump to the next question is, Ontario is such an
13:26
interesting study right now. If you remember when Doug Ford came
13:29
in, he canceled 700 plus renewable energy
13:33
contracts. And in the last two years, the opposite has
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happened. Ontario has almost two
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site C's worth of battery storage procurements that are now finished. They're
13:44
looking at building more renewables for the grid
13:47
right now. They just announced last week 10 plus billion
13:51
dollars to help homeowners switch to heat pumps and
13:55
other technologies that are going to save them money and clean up the grid. So I
14:01
Yeah, yeah. It's funny, though. I live in Ontario. I haven't
14:04
heard that. And I'm pretty, I follow
14:08
this quite frequently. I wonder, you
14:11
know, he's, you know, he's come out, Doug Ford, the Premier has
14:14
come out very against renewables saying it's like
14:18
the costs are too high. Has it changed over his last,
14:23
Oh, absolutely. I mean, Ontario through
14:27
its utilities and its regulators have been looking at procuring
14:31
more wind power, particularly from some of the northern parts of
14:34
the province. You know, the battery storage and
14:38
what they've done there is quite amazing. You know, they're bringing nuclear
14:42
back online on time, on budget, you know, and in the
14:45
atomic and nuclear world, that's almost unheard of to be able to do that. So,
14:49
I mean, good on Ontario for you know, for
14:53
kind of realizing the error of their ways when
14:56
they first came into power and realizing that, hey, wait a minute, clean energy
14:59
is something that a lot of foreign investment is looking for. And
15:03
if you look at the 50 plus billion dollars of kind of automotive
15:07
battery plants that have been landed in Canada, most in Ontario, some
15:11
in Quebec, you know, that's all predicated on a clean grid.
15:15
And if you look at these companies that have come into Ontario, and
15:18
rescue the automotive manufacturing industry, you know, the
15:22
first thing they say is they say you've got affordable, reliable, cheap,
15:25
clean power. And, you know, the Ford administration has realized
15:30
Yeah. So it's almost like it's not that necessarily they want to change. It's almost like
15:33
they're forced the chain to bring in more investment, to bring in more opportunity,
15:37
especially Ontario is known for its automotive sector and it was
15:40
dying at one point. It wasn't very good at
15:43
one point and now it started to, it looks like it's reinvigorated with
15:46
all these plants that we're going to be putting in for, or changing over to the
15:50
electric vehicles. So with Volkswagen and other places, so other companies.
15:54
So that's wonderful. We're going to go
15:57
on to the next question. I'm
16:00
sure you've been asked this question a number of times. You thought about it and talked about it a
16:03
number of times. It seems that the federal level, one
16:11
party is talking about renewable energies and we need to do more
16:14
investment and another party is not talking about that. It's talking
16:17
about the opposite of that. It costs too much. They're still on the cost. Because
16:22
this question is all about the cost, The
16:25
cost that happened so
16:29
long ago, like even over a decade ago and the problems that
16:32
we had there, why is that being brought back up knowing that
16:36
the cost has been reduced and that there's more opportunity? It's almost
16:39
like we should be switching over and we should be making those investments
16:45
Yeah. And if you look at, for example, the federal conservatives and
16:49
the federal liberals, and to a lesser extent, the NDP, but
16:53
you know, the federal conservatives, you know, have made part of their election platform,
16:57
clean energy. They do want to build a grid. They want to build the
17:00
grid. They want more nuclear. You know, they don't talk about renewables as
17:03
much or at all, but you know, unsaid is that's
17:07
part of the equation. So I think,
17:11
you know, anybody that wants to govern federally in Canada, You
17:14
know, it's going to realize fairly quickly that, you know,
17:18
our grid is 83, 84% non-emitting, and that is a massive competitive
17:22
advantage. The other thing too, is you get briefed up as a leader of
17:25
any party, you realize that 8% of our electricity generation
17:29
goes to the US. And, you know, the opportunity there for arbitrage and
17:32
profit is fairly substantial. So, you know,
17:36
it is kind of known. Now, what the difference being is
17:39
that each political party has a different way of getting there. You
17:43
know, the federal government has its clean electricity regulations, you
17:46
know, which stipulate that there's a carbon intensity for every unit
17:49
of electricity produced. You know, obviously, some provinces object
17:53
to that and have been objecting to that. The final rules are in place. you
17:57
know, they've been adjusted a little bit to make sure Alberta, Ontario, Saskatchewan
18:01
and some of the other provinces can actually meet the 2035 target in
18:04
a way that has minimal effect on the rate pair. But if you
18:08
look at the kind of more, you know, center right parties, they're
18:11
kind of flipping it around a little bit going, okay, you know, we'll use tax
18:14
incentives rather than regulation to get to the same place. So, you
18:18
know, ultimately, I think all parties kinda know
18:22
they need to get to a massively expanded clean
18:25
grid because it's in our competitive interests. And
18:29
also too, is if you look at what's happening down south around potential tariffs and
18:33
you know, having more electricity up here that's
18:37
clean allows us to basically manufacture products
18:40
that we can now sell into Europe, or we can sell into Asia, you
18:44
know, where there is potentially a price premium on things that
18:47
are clean. So a huge opportunity there. So,
18:51
you know, I just, I don't see the distance that a lot of people see
18:54
between various political parties, mainly because we're in the weeds, and we're
19:00
well i mean it's it is it's a relief to know because like it
19:03
affects the way people vote you know i mean obviously
19:06
this this election coming up for canada i think is a little a little bit
19:10
different where it seems like maybe one you
19:13
know the the liberals have overstayed their welcome or or what have
19:16
you and it seems like The genuine sort of prognosis
19:20
is that the conservatives are going to get in, but it's scary for someone like
19:24
myself who doesn't hear the conservative, the federal conservative party
19:27
talk about climate change or how they're going to address climate change other
19:31
than carbon capture, which we know that technology is not completely
19:34
there at this point. It's just really it's
19:38
nice to know that they actually have it in their platform. Maybe you have to do a little bit more
19:41
research on their platform and where that's available. But it is
19:44
nice to know that that a lot of the political parties are moving towards
19:48
that, because I think it's it's we're getting into dangerous territory here.
19:51
You know, with the fires down in L.A. and, you know, we have we had fires
19:54
a couple of like last year, not two years ago, I guess, that
19:58
were pretty extravagant. And even now, it continues on now
20:02
in certain parts of BC and so forth. So I think it's a little
20:05
dangerous, but that's good to know. Let's go on to the second
20:09
argument, which was, I believe it was the energy, is
20:17
Which we hear a lot, yes. Yes, yes. So talk about
20:21
that. What were they saying? And then what's your
20:26
This has been a kind of refrain that's been said around
20:29
the world many, many times is that, you know, particular EV
20:33
sales mandates will create a situation that will
20:36
overwhelm the electricity grid. Now, either at the macro level,
20:40
you know, in a provincial or state or national scale, you know, or
20:43
right down to your local level that, you know, they'll melt the transformers if
20:47
everybody in your block gets an EV and charges at the same time. So,
20:50
I mean, let's just start with EVs, then we'll work is
21:00
that EVs have a very small impact over
21:04
on the grid. So if you look at, and again, I'll just take
21:08
Canada for an example, looking at two or 3% more electricity required
21:12
in the coming years, and that's to actually support the EV sales
21:15
mandates that are in place kind of federally and provincially, which
21:19
are very ambitious. VC's EV sales target is 90% by 2030 and 100% by 2035. The federal target is
21:22
not far behind that. Yet,
21:29
you know, EVs are not massive consumers of the grid. And
21:33
also too, what people tend to forget, you
21:36
can go out today and you can buy an F-150 Lightning Extended Range,
21:40
you can buy a Cybertruck, you can buy a Chevy
21:43
Silverado kind of RST launch edition. All
21:47
of these have vehicle-to-home charging capabilities. So your
21:50
vehicle can store energy. But
21:55
that also means it's got vehicle-to-grid technologies. And there
21:58
are pilots happening right now in the States where utilities are
22:01
signing up F-150 Lightning owners to actually sell
22:05
power back to the grid in time and needs. So here you are,
22:08
and we're not very far away from the time where you will have
22:12
an EV in your driveway. It'll be plugged into your house, but
22:15
it's also gonna be plugged into the grid. And your utility, when you give them
22:18
permission, can go and fish those electrons out
22:22
of your car, bring them back to the grid, push them back in. So your
22:25
actually car starts to not just be an appliance that sits there when
22:28
you're not driving it, it actually starts, it's a money maker. You know,
22:32
that. And also too, it contributes to grid capacity and
22:35
resilience. So, you know, that's just kind of one example of
22:39
all this. And the other one too, You know, you live in Ontario, right? So
22:42
you may be aware of it. They have this overnight EV charging
22:46
rate just over two cents. So when you actually do the math,
22:50
you can take a Hyundai IONIQ 5 EV, you know, the
22:53
one you see everywhere, kind of looks like an 80s kind of a Hyundai. You know,
22:57
that will charge from zero to 100% for $2.35 right now. And
23:02
compare that to a RAV4 with a 55 liter fuel
23:05
tank. I think you guys pay around $1.70 or whatever for
23:12
OK. And so anyways, you're looking at $90 plus.
23:16
So the EVs can not only they
23:20
can balance the grid, they can save homeowners money, both
23:23
in driving them and in the future in terms of selling power back to the grid. There
23:27
are actually these massive mechanisms that will stabilize the grid over
23:31
time as adoption continues. Heat
23:34
pumps are another really interesting one that people go, oh, when you switch out a natural
23:38
gas furnace, you switch to a heat pump. A couple of things are happening
23:41
there. One is, a heat pump is three to
23:44
five times more efficient than a gas furnace. Why
23:48
is that? One joule of energy gives you many
23:52
more joules of heat or cooling, just how a heat pump works in
23:55
terms of physics. Also too, gas
23:59
appliances are not 100 percent efficient. That's one
24:02
way that overall you save energy. The
24:06
other interesting thing is parts of Canada, particularly in the West and BC, 40 percent
24:10
of developing dwellings in BC are heated through
24:13
baseboards and they're tremendously inefficient. If you actually
24:17
switch out a dwelling that's currently heated with
24:20
a baseboard to a heat pump, you get massive amounts of savings. We've
24:24
actually kind of figured it out that it's about $500 a
24:27
year on your electricity bill you would save on
24:30
your average dwelling. Just move into a heat pump from
24:34
electric baseboard heating. So it's not a climate thing. It's just a
24:37
household affordability thing. So, and
24:41
then the other kind of piece of these arguments are that, you
24:44
know, natural gas bans and new construction, you know,
24:48
will overwhelm the grid. And again, you know, very similar that
24:52
because heat pumps are so efficient, you
24:55
know, and because you can actually now have appliances like
24:58
smart thermostats where the grid can control and you can actually use your house
25:02
as a virtual power plant, you know, it's not the issue that
25:07
Right. Right. I think it's really interesting, too, because we've always talked about how,
25:11
as a species, we have to innovate to get out of this climate change. Not
25:14
only do we have to reduce our emissions, but we have to innovate. And
25:17
it seems like we're doing that. And obviously, it takes time. And
25:20
that evolution of that technology will always take time. And it'll
25:24
be less cost effective at the beginning. And as we move through
25:28
the progress. And as more and more people are using the technology, we
25:31
get more efficient and more efficient, which seems to be with heat pumps, it seems
25:35
to be with EVs. It just seems like it's always
25:38
there. It's going to continue to grow, it's going to continue to get
25:42
better. But it seems like a lot of people are just stuck
25:45
in the past, you know, and they don't want to embrace the
25:49
new information. or get the new information. And I
25:52
know it changes quickly, just like the tech industry does,
25:55
and so it's hard to keep up. But how come, you know, from
25:59
a mainstream media point of view, why aren't
26:02
we hearing about these success stories more often than
26:08
You know, because, you know, the way media works is
26:11
you have to have narrative tension. Right. You know, when someone
26:15
on a block buys a electric pickup and all
26:21
The person says, Oh, it's 10 bucks. And they go, what? And then they realize
26:25
that, uh, you know, uh, F one 50 lightning is this exact
26:28
same cost as the internal combustion version. So what you do is
26:32
you get the network effects starting to happen there. So, you know, that's the stuff
26:35
that doesn't get reported on. I think what you're gonna see
26:39
the media pick up on in the next couple of years, you know,
26:42
worldwide, is these, you know, communities that
26:45
are cut off because of drought, wildfires, flooding,
26:48
and those communities, the option for them now is
26:52
to actually generate and store their own power. So,
26:56
you know, there's a whole wave of new adopters coming,
27:00
you know, because of these climate incidents that
27:03
are happening. They're going to have rooftop solar and batteries and use
27:06
their cars to store information, and they're going to work together as a community, a
27:09
power to community. Now, we call these distributed energy
27:13
resources in the tech terms, but reality, what
27:17
it is, it's community, resilience, self-sufficiency, sovereignty. Yeah,
27:29
so you don't hear too much about the media, but what's
27:32
interesting right now is if you look in the US,
27:36
it's really interesting is that EV sales are
27:39
at their highest level ever. Part of that is
27:43
because the incoming Trump administration may get rid of the $7,500 tax
27:47
credit. But also too, I think people in the
27:50
US are realizing, I was just in California two and a half weeks ago,
27:55
Gas down there is $4.50 US a gallon. It's
28:01
What's that equivalent for? Is that over $2 a liter? Yeah, it would be
28:04
over $2. Wow, that is expensive. Man, that's
28:07
insane. That's insane. I could not, I just, one of the reasons why I went, I
28:11
have an EV. It's one of the reasons why I went to EV because we were approaching $2 here
28:14
in Ontario at one point a couple of years ago in 2022. And
28:18
I was just like, I can't do this anymore. My car's coming. It's at
28:21
that point where if I turn it in, I could, I can do well, but I needed
28:24
premium gas and that was going to get more and more expensive. And I just like,
28:28
no, this is cheaper. And it's, and it's true. Now, one thing I'd love
28:31
to get your, your, uh, your answer on when i
28:34
went to so if you buy an ev in canada or you're looking to get an
28:38
ev in ontario anyway you can go to it's like um
28:41
uh it's like an ev place oh what's the name of it i forget the
28:45
name of it but it's i think it's ev easy or something like that but
28:48
you can go in they give you all the information all the different types of evs the
28:51
different types of chargers, you know, what to look for in terms of price of
28:55
how you're charging it. And the woman there said that at night, they talked
28:59
about, you know, the breaking the grid if everybody charged at night at the same time,
29:03
if everybody, if all of Ontarians had, you know, an
29:06
electric vehicle and said because at night they
29:09
change over to nuclear power, it's not only cheaper, but you'll
29:13
never really run out of out of energy. Is that is that a
29:18
Yeah. So there's a reason that, you know, the
29:22
Ontario utilities are, you know, wanting you to charge it
29:25
just over two cents a kilowatt hour, which is almost free power
29:29
overnight. Yeah, it's for that very reason is they're trying to load balance across
29:33
the daily cycle. So, you know, more
29:36
AV owners kind of charging at night is actually a very good
29:40
thing for them. So yeah, yeah. So it is, you
29:43
know, and it's real, you know, BC, where I
29:47
live, has a kind of overnight rate that's 5 cents a
29:50
kilowatt hour, kind of cheaper than the normal rate. Again, even
29:54
though we don't have nuclear, we have large hydro reservoirs. But again, these
29:57
are utilities that are trying to spread a load across the 24-hour period. And
30:03
Yeah, I just scheduled through the app. It's great. You
30:07
don't even have to worry. You just keep the plug in and then at 9.30 it turns
30:10
on and it takes two hours to charge up and you're all ready to
30:14
go. It's great and I've saved so much money. So that's
30:17
wonderful. So we know it's not gonna break the grid. That's clear.
30:22
The last point I think was, what
30:25
was the last point here? It was German electricity rates between,
30:33
Imports and exports of electricity. And there
30:36
have been a number of commentators kind of looking at various provinces and
30:40
going, what happens in
30:44
B.C., what's happened in B.C. with droughts and reservoir levels.
30:49
I think, you know, if you look at the numbers over the last year, year and
30:52
a half, B.C. has imported about 25% of
30:56
its power. And so the inevitable conclusion from that is
30:59
that we have some sort of structural electricity deficit. And
31:03
we can't self-generate enough power. And we're now depending on
31:07
California and Alberta and a bunch of other states
31:11
to bail us out. And when you actually look at, you
31:14
know, again, we come back to the arbitrage, right? So, you know,
31:18
yes, we imported over the last year, 16% more power than we exported. of
31:27
that power. So, you know, for a lot of Canada that has hydro reservoirs, you
31:31
know, we can hold back water until there's a need and demand requires and,
31:35
you know, you actually wait till the price spikes and then you open
31:38
the reservoir and you sell it to the US. So, if you look at just
31:41
BC alone, you know, since 2019, the province has made $1.5 billion in
31:49
profit on imports and exports. So what
31:52
we have been doing is basically being buying cheap power in
31:55
California. And what's super interesting right now is with the
31:59
amount of solar that's been set up in the US Southwest, they're
32:02
actually getting to periods where power prices are approaching zero or
32:06
even negative. And when that happens, the smart thing
32:09
is utility somewhere else is to actually buy that power so you don't
32:12
have to do this yourself. So what's been happening is You
32:16
know, utilities in BC are buying power at
32:19
very low rates or sometimes even zero or negative rates. And
32:23
that allows us to kind of hold the water back in our reservoirs until such
32:26
time as power is needed. And the price goes up. And
32:30
that's allowed us to do a couple of things. You know, one is it's
32:33
allowed utilities like BC Hydro to kind
32:37
of weather the drought that's been happening here for the last
32:40
two years or so. I think more importantly, though, it allows
32:44
us to respond to emergencies. So if you remember this time
32:47
last year, you know, Alberta went into this massive deep
32:50
freeze. They sent out grid alerts on their phones. People were asked to
32:54
just, you know, shut down your appliances, stop using electricity. So
32:58
in that instance, there was plenty of water held behind dams
33:02
in BC and BC was able to send an absolute ton
33:05
of power to Alberta to kind of get over that hump. So,
33:08
you know, these are the types of kind of trading situations that
33:12
we're seeing more and more of. So, you know, and that's kind of the message we're
33:16
trying to get out is that, you know, power imports are not a bad thing because
33:19
it allows us to actually prepare for when we need the power and
33:24
Right. So is the big commodity in the future going to be
33:27
the imports and exports of power? Like, is
33:30
that going to be one that, you know, is it going to like right now we
33:33
get incentivized to, you know, charge our EVs at
33:37
night and so forth. The big worry that I hear a lot
33:40
of people say around me is like, oh, we'll wait till everybody's on
33:43
the grid and everybody needs electricity. They're just going to increase that.
33:47
And they're just going to increase it to a point where you just, you know, it's going to
33:50
be just as expensive as gas. Do you see that happening
33:54
or from the research that your staff has done and your organization has
33:59
Not if you plan correctly. So, and you
34:03
know what I mean by that is the more interties
34:06
you can build between grids, the more stability and reliability
34:10
you have. So if you have a particular grid somewhere in North America that
34:14
for whatever reasons is struggling. you know, middle of winter, no
34:18
sun, no wind, power can come in from elsewhere. So
34:21
that's the kind of grid that we need to be building. And the more you
34:25
build that kind of across a continent, whether it's North America, Europe
34:28
or elsewhere, you know, the more stability you have, the more reliability you
34:32
have, and less likelihood you are going to get that there's going to be
34:35
a price spike. You know, that's one of our large kind of recommendations to
34:39
the federal government is, you know, one of the things that they can do
34:42
in the electricity space, because most of it's governed by provincial jurisdiction, you
34:46
know, is help provinces connect their grids to each other and help
34:49
provinces connect grids into the US. So, you know, that's
34:53
kind of part of it. The other one too, and we talked a little bit about this, is
34:56
that, you know, homeowners and communities will have more agency
35:00
in the future. where they're going to generate and store their own power when they need
35:03
it. And then the third part you already talked about, right, is kind
35:06
of the innovation aspect of this. So, you know, as we have this
35:10
kind of large glut of solar coming into
35:13
the U.S. Southwest, you know, people are doing innovative things with that. They're
35:17
turning it into green hydrogen and then holding that until such
35:20
time as the price goes up. And then you can run the hydrogen through an electrolyzer
35:24
again and turn it back into power. There's a whole bunch of
35:27
clever innovative ways that we're starting to look at power
35:31
and how we can monetize it and use it. Again,
35:36
if you do it wrong, prices go up. But if you do it right,
35:39
you can actually have a very affordable grid that's incredibly reliable, keep
35:43
prices low. It helps, again, jurisdictions decarbonize,
35:48
meet climate targets. What people forget too is that
35:52
when you are fossil fuel powered in your
35:55
home, You know, you are at the whim of geopolitical events. You
35:58
know, the oil price isn't set locally. It's not set by your profits, not
36:02
set by your utility. The gas price is exactly the same, you
36:05
know, and you can find yourself with $2 gas fairly quickly. There's
36:08
nothing really you could do about it, you know, but an electricity price, like,
36:12
you know, if you're living in Ontario and Ontario has made the right moves and
36:15
you've made the right moves as a homeowner, you know, you can
36:23
That's really interesting. And so there's, it seems like a lot more flexibility in
36:26
going more towards renewables. So that's, that's,
36:30
that's fantastic. I do have one last question. I couldn't let you go without
36:33
asking this question. Is, you
36:37
know, we, we're looking at a new election. The carbon tax seems
36:41
to be a really big question here. People hate it. People,
36:45
absolutely. The citizens who have to pay it, hate it. Even though,
36:48
you know, there's the proven fact that, you know, you get money back, even
36:52
though there's proven fact that it hasn't increased
36:56
inflation or it's been like a 0.00012% increase
37:00
in inflation. Well, I guess it's a two part
37:03
question. One, has the carbon tax work since it's been implemented?
37:07
And how can we tell? And then also, is this going
37:11
to be is this going to be scrapped? And how is it going to affect sort of our
37:14
climate, our climate? I guess our climate? I
37:25
Yeah. So I'll tackle those kind of, uh, in the order that you
37:29
asked. So, so, so carbon, carbon pricing
37:32
does work. Um, you know, it is worldwide seen
37:36
as the most economically efficient way to reduce emissions and
37:40
you know, how it works. And this is where people get a little bit confused is
37:43
the carbon tax. At the consumer level. So this is the
37:46
household level, like when you and I pay, when we go fill up our car, you know,
37:51
Um, it really does two things and two things only it
37:55
changes. what you drive and how you drive and it
37:58
changes how you heat your home. Like those are the two main things
38:01
that the carbon tax does. So just kind of keep in mind on that because we're going to come back to
38:04
it. And if you look at, you know, places and jurisdictions that
38:08
have had a carbon tax in place for a long time, British
38:11
Columbia has had a carbon tax since 2009. And if
38:14
you look at emissions intensity per capita per unit of
38:18
GDP, the line goes down. So carbon taxes are
38:21
a big part of that and they actually have driven change. both
38:25
in the industrial level and the behavioral level. Now, there's
38:28
two separate carbon taxes in Canada. And the one that people are
38:31
most upset about and they hear about in the Axodax campaigns, that
38:34
is the consumer carbon price. It's called the fuel charge under
38:38
the federal system. So that is the X cents a
38:41
liter that you pay and what you pay on your gas bill when
38:44
you kind of go to pay that every month. There's also an
38:47
industrial carbon pricing system and it's called the output based
38:51
pricing system. Some provinces have their own system. Alberta
38:54
has one, BC has one. So when you
38:58
look at kind of overall on the consumer system. You
39:01
know, what you're seeing these days is the cost between an internal combustion
39:05
car and an EV is, you know, they're
39:08
coming closer together. And if you actually look at kind of
39:11
the total ownership costs, the EV wins every time. And,
39:15
you know, if you keep your car for, you know, eight years and you drive it
39:18
20,000 kilometers a year, you're going to save a ton of money with the EV. The
39:22
capital cost up front is a little bit higher, but overall the
39:25
savings. So, you know, what the carbon tax its
39:28
intent is to actually help you make that choice to
39:32
buy the EV over the gas car. And in that respect, it
39:35
has kind of worked. We're also looking at heat pumps versus
39:39
natural gas furnaces. And again, if you look at most jurisdictions across
39:42
Canada, you know, the math is starting to come out in the heat pump favor, especially
39:46
when you factor in the fact that you get air conditioning for free out of a
39:49
heat pump. So, you know, so, you
39:52
know, from our perspective is, you know, carbon tax has done a
39:55
lot of its heavy lifting. on the consumer side already. And
40:00
it would be a shame if it went away because it still
40:04
has work to do. But it's not the end of the world. People
40:08
are still going to buy EVs. People are still going to buy heat pumps. The math still works
40:11
out on EVs. The math works out a little bit less on heat pumps,
40:14
but that could change shortly. So the way we look at carbon
40:18
pricing at the consumer level is it has done a lot
40:21
of heavy lifting and it's done its job. If it goes away, there
40:24
are other ways to make up that delta to help you meet your climate targets.
40:29
On the industrial carbon pricing system, those are very,
40:32
very robust. And what you're seeing now is you're
40:36
seeing a lot of industries coming to the federal conservatives,
40:40
you know, who may form the next government, it's looking lightly, kind
40:44
of going, you know, don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. Alberta intends,
40:48
whatever happens at the federal level after the next election, to keep its
40:53
will most likely do otherwise. Quebec's got cap and trade. So
40:58
on the industrial side, I think we're seeing a lot more likelihood of
41:03
And we're seeing change within that too. Like we're seeing industrial change, like
41:10
Well, and that's just it. And the other one too, the business community and industry, they
41:13
want to know what the rules are, right? Because, you know, if they know
41:17
that carbon pricing is going to stay in some shape or form for the next
41:20
10 years, that helps them make their capital investments kind of right now.
41:24
Right now, you know, we've got a lot of investment dollars in Canada sitting
41:31
Yeah, true. That's interesting. It
41:34
makes it interesting because I think that the one thing from a citizen
41:38
point of view is we just don't see the results right off the bat. You know, we
41:41
don't see it. Everybody's like, well, you know, always the
41:44
question, the loaded question is like, well, how much has our emissions
41:48
reduced because of it and all this kind of stuff. And we just don't see
41:51
it because emissions are usually a year behind and when we measure and stuff. We
41:55
just don't see it right off the bat, but it is a slow burn.
41:59
No pun intended, but it is slow to change and everybody is
42:02
going to change as we go forward, whether it's for a carbon
42:06
tax or a pricing point or just ease of
42:09
not having to go to the gas station anymore and just charging at home and
42:15
And the other thing that under the consumer carbon tax, under
42:18
the federal system, which is in place for a number of provinces, is
42:23
80% of families are better off with the consumer carbon price. Basically,
42:27
they get more back on their rebates than they're actually paying
42:31
for the fuel that they burn. In
42:36
that respect, the federal system is quite elegant in that most
42:39
Canadians are better off. Provinces
42:45
that have their own systems run them a little bit differently and
42:48
they have different results in that calculus. But generally, you know,
42:51
carbon pricing, it works and it
42:56
Yeah. Well, it'll be interesting to see what happens after the election to see if it stays or
42:59
not, depending on who gets in. But regardless
43:04
of what happens, Mark, thank you so much for coming on the podcast and
43:07
letting us know all about the different ways that renewable energy
43:10
can help and how it can help not only our planet, but ourselves in
43:14
terms of helping out at the wallet. So we really appreciate
43:18
you taking time to to doing what you do and coming on and
43:21
telling us all this stuff. And then obviously, again, thank you
43:24
so much for what you and your team continually do. I think it's
43:28
a necessity here in Canada to know
43:31
what we have in terms of clean energy and where we're going and some
43:41
Thank you, Mark, for joining me on today's episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast.
43:44
It was such a fun interview to do. I love doing these interviews because
43:48
I hear so much information, so much misinformation, not only from
43:51
media outlets, but also from people around me just being like, what about this? What about
43:55
this? And questions and questions and questions that sometimes I can't answer. I don't
43:58
know everything. I wish I did. I don't know everything. I just get it from the people that
44:01
I interview and the articles that I get my information from.
44:05
And so to be able to have Mark come in with, you know, the
44:08
information that his staff, his organization looks out for
44:11
and reports on all the time is just so nice to have
44:15
and know that we're in our country, in our world, we're actually headed
44:18
towards a really great place when it comes to innovation on renewables and
44:22
coming into implementing renewable energy. and being able to live
44:26
off of renewable energy and even go into more of like being more dependent
44:29
on ourselves in the future. It's going to be really interesting to see what
44:33
happens. But I'm going to be sharing this interview with a lot of people, I can tell
44:36
you that. But this is a lot of fun. But I want to hear your comments. I'm
44:39
going to put the website of Clean Energy Canada in the show notes, in
44:43
the description. So you can just go below or in the show notes, depending on where you're watching,
44:46
if you're watching on YouTube or wherever, Apple Podcasts,
44:50
you're listening to this, or you're watching this on Spotify. Just go
44:53
to the description of the show notes, and you'll be able to
44:56
click on that website But also if you want to get a hold of me and you
44:59
want to ask me questions or you have any comments on this episode, please feel free
45:02
to comment below if you're on YouTube or if you're on Spotify
45:07
or DM me at howtoprotecttheocean on Instagram. That's
45:10
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45:14
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45:18
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hit that notification bell on YouTube. And of course, hit follow on
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all the other podcasting platforms that you can that you're
45:27
a part of in your favorite podcast platform. So thank you. That's it for today's episode. Thank
45:31
you so much for joining me on today's episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast.
45:34
I'm your host, Andrew Lewin. Have a great day. We'll talk to you next time and happy