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Summer rewind: When we say 'the cloud' what we mean is 'the data centre'. Globally, data centres are projected to consume over 1000 terawatt hours in 2026. What does that mean for energy production, distribution, and consumption? Guest Phil Harris, Cerio President and CEO, joins thinkenergy to shed light on something we all rely on but may not fully understand. From efficiency to sustainability, environmental concerns to Cerio's role improving how data centres manage energy. Listen in for the future of cloud computing. Related links Cerio: https://www.cerio.ai/ Phil Harris on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paharris/ Trevor Freeman on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/trevor-freeman-p-eng-8b612114 Hydro Ottawa: https://hydroottawa.com/en To subscribe using Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/thinkenergy/id1465129405 To subscribe using Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7wFz7rdR8Gq3f2WOafjxpl To subscribe on Libsyn: http://thinkenergy.libsyn.com/ --- Subscribe so you don't miss a video: https://www.youtube.com/user/hydroottawalimited Follow along on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hydroottawa Stay in the know on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HydroOttawa Keep up with the posts on X: https://twitter.com/thinkenergypod --- Transcript: [00:00:00] Trevor Freeman: Hi everyone, and welcome to the summer edition of Think Energy. As a reminder, we are in podcast vacation mode, and while our normal day-to-day work continues, we are on a brief pause from our regularly scheduled episodes to recharge, rethink, plan for the fall. But we don't want to leave you without anything to listen to. So, we've pulled some of our favorite insights and episodes from the past year related to the energy transition and where we are. So, welcome to episode two of our summer rewind, the August episode. So, as a reminder, this summer, we're looking at that collision between digital infrastructure and physical infrastructure, how the world of evolving technology is shaping and influencing and changing the way that we interact with energy and, in fact, interact with the energy grid as well. Last month, we looked at my conversation with Lynn Pettis from Overstory and how Overstory and Hydro Ottawa have partnered together to use satellite imagery and AI to protect our grid. In part two of our summer rewind today, or the second episode, we're looking at the world of data centres, and we're hearing lots about data centres as AI grows and takes kind of more of an ever-present role in our day-to-day lives. And I had a conversation with Phil Harris from Cerio. So, we're going to dive back into that episode and look at kind of the staggering energy footprint of AI data centres, of the cloud, etc., and how this boom is really changing how we do data centre design and really forcing a change in how we do data centre design just because of the sheer magnitude of energy required here. And we're going to look at kind of what this means for the future of global power distribution. So, sit back, relax, hopefully somewhere cool in the heat of the summer, and listen to this episode of Summer Rewind with Phil Harris from Cerio. [00:02:18] Podcast Intro: Welcome to Think Energy, a podcast that dives into the fast-changing world of energy through conversations with industry leaders, innovators, and people on the front lines of the energy transition. Join me, Trevor Freeman, as I explore the traditional, unconventional, and up-and-coming facets of the energy industry. If you have any thoughts, feedback, or ideas for topics we should cover, please reach out to us at thinkenergy@hydroottawa.com. [00:02:49] Trevor Freeman: Hi everyone, and welcome back. Data centres have come up a number of times on this show, and for very good reason. They have become a key underpinning technology for so much of our lives. Every time we pull out that phone from our pockets to pull up directions or buy something online, or doom scroll on your social media or news site of choice, every time you use your phone, stream a movie, leverage an AI model, whatever you end up using your phone for. It's funny, as I read this list, I'm sure there's like some university student out there who's thinking, man, what is this old man talking about? We don't use our phones for that. Whatever the kids are doing these days, whatever we're doing these days with our phones, with our computers, our tablets, etc., all of that leverages infrastructure that most of us have never seen, and quite frankly, probably don't really understand. We talk about the cloud like it's this amorphous, nebulous thing. But in reality, we're talking about real hardware in a real building that uses real energy, mainly electricity, a lot of water. And this isn't really new. Like, we've been leveraging centralized data centres for many years now. But what is changing is the scale of the data centres that we're seeing now and the pace of growth in computing power that we need to do the things that we want to do and that our data centres are able to deliver. So, just to throw a few numbers at it, the traditional data centre servers that maybe powered the early days of on-demand online streaming services, for example, they used anywhere from 5 to 15 kilowatts per rack. But modern server racks that are used to power AI searches, for example, can hit anywhere from 60 to 100 kilowatts per rack. This is great from a power output per rack perspective, but it means massive energy needs. And that is showing up in the size of load requests that we're seeing from new data centres. New data centres today are asking for service connections that are orders of magnitude higher than those built even just 5 years ago. Globally, data centres are projected to consume over 1,000 terawatt-hours in 2026. And just a quick kind of refresher from high school or wherever you would have learned this, a terawatt is 1,000 gigawatts, which is 1,000 megawatts. So, 1,000 terawatt-hours, which is roughly equivalent to the annual electricity demand from the country of Japan, an entire country. So, given all of this, there are a lot of incentives to find ways to maximize efficiency and reduce some of that energy demand. And that's where my next guest, Phil Harris, and his company, Cerio, come into play. I'll let Phil get into the details of exactly what Cerio does, but essentially, their goal is to reimagine the data centre to maximize sustainability and reduce energy needs. Phil is Cerio's President and CEO, and has been in the networking and data centre industry for over 35 years, including at well-known companies like Intel and Cisco, to name two. And I'm really excited about this conversation, one, to understand how do we make data centres a little bit more efficient, or maybe a lot more efficient, but also just to really understand, like, what are we talking about when we talk about a data centre? What is actually happening, what is physically inside these buildings? And we'll get into a little bit of that in our conversation. So, Phil, welcome to the show. [00:07:05] Phil Harris: Well, thanks, Trevor. I appreciate it. [00:07:07] Trevor Freeman: So, Phil, obviously, we're here today to talk about your work building sustainable data centres, or trying to make data centres a little bit more sustainable. But before we get into that, you know, you've spent your career, you know, decades of your career at different tech giants, let's call them, Intel, Cisco, to two to mention. You've seen quite a bit of change, no doubt, over your time. Has that change, like does this industry change linearly? Does it grow fairly steady, or is it kind of big jumps? And are we on the cusp of any major shifts? What can you kind of tell us about the future of this sector, data, tech, etc.? [00:07:54] Phil Harris: It's interesting. I think as companies start, and I was at companies like Cisco, for example, when it was a very small company to where it was a very large company, and this should be no surprise to anybody, the bigger the company gets, the harder it is to change. And they really find that the only way they change is when they absolutely have to, not because they want to. And that's a combination of just inertia and shareholders' expectations and a whole bunch of things. So, I would say that the bigger the company is, the harder it is for them to react. And so, I think small, nimble companies tend to do much better when there's a lot of transformational technology and development and changes in the overall ecosystem we live in. I think your, the second part of your question, you know, I look at the current situation as a point in time where a lot of companies will have to make some significant changes simply because we are hitting two new walls: technological walls, commercial walls, geopolitical walls, that are really sort of confining what people can do. So, I think what's about to happen is we're about to see a significant change. And this is not atypical in the industry. If we think about back into the start of what we would think of today as computer science around mainframes that were happening in the '60s, you know, for about a decade and a half, two decades, there was a lot of dominance around a particular way of doing things. And then some new innovational technology came along that rapidly changed that, scaled out, and it went from a very dominant set of players to a much larger number of smaller players who could then provide more innovation and more scale and more choice. And I think we're about to see that transition occurring as well. [00:09:47] Trevor Freeman: So, is this, is there sort of like an analogous time, 10 years ago, 20 years ago, are we on the cusp of like the big, the big change that we've seen before? Like, what would you compare this to, you know, in the last 20, 30 years? [00:10:01] Phil Harris: Yeah, I mean, I think there's been eras of compute. And if we say, I mean, we can find analogies outside of the compute world, but let's just stay in the computer science world. I gave the mainframe example as one, and then we went to what we call client-server, which scaled out rapidly. Telephony, we went from large, big telephone exchanges that started in the government space, went to very large organizations. Now, basically, we've completely scaled out how we make phone calls, to use that now 20th-century terminology. Nobody really makes telephone calls anymore. And we went through this with cloud computing and the internet, where there was a change in the approach to the way we did things that suddenly gave us a scale-out mentality rather than a scale-up mentality. And I think that's what we have to key in on here, is that we can, someone, I was on a panel yesterday where we were talking about scale. And I said, well, to scale or not to scale, that is not the question. It's how do we scale? Do we continue to scale up, which is the current model, or do we start to think about scaling out, which is a more distributed model? So, we go from a small number of big things to a large number of smaller things. And typically in computer science, whatever you want to, storage, compute, memory, telephony, everything we've ever done goes through this arc. [00:11:32] Trevor Freeman: Yeah, it's interesting, and there's, obviously, my brain's going to immediately try and find those similarities between my world that I live in on the energy side of things. And it's the same question. There is no path where we're not expanding the amount of energy we need, we're not going to be using more energy. But there are different ways to do that. And there are different paths we can take: the business-as-usual, the just grow, grow, grow, centralized energy production and large-scale transmission, or there's a combination of like grow those things, but also find alternative methods, more DERs, more sort of like close to consumer energy sources and storage, etc., etc. And people that listen to this podcast know I kind of go on ad nauseam about this. So, lots of similarities there. Another kind of framing or foundational thing that I want to talk through before we really get into the meat of our conversation is helping ground both myself and our listeners in what exactly we're talking about here. So, we all use, whether we know it or not, we use, you know, like cloud computing constantly, whether it's in our calls, how we're using the internet, using AI more frequently now. What is the physical reality behind that? What's actually happening? What is, you know, the term "data centre"? What is a data centre for our listeners here? What does that look like? [00:13:17] Phil Harris: Yeah, let's start there. And that's a great question. We started recognizing that the amount of power and space required for computers in companies and government and all sorts of different applications was getting larger than we could put in a room in a closet near maybe where people were using it. We had to start to create dedicated space, because the power requirements, the cooling requirements, just the noise—you can't hear this, but just in my basement, I have a few different compute systems that my wife continually tells me is keeping the neighbors awake. The reality is the environmental aspect of these things became very difficult. So, we created these purpose-built locations that had then different requirements in terms of access and facilities and power and cooling and staffing. And so, they became a new way of thinking about building compute infrastructure at a building level, not just at the individual computers themselves. So, a data centre is usually a very large room, or building, I should say, that houses large amounts of compute and storage and other networking equipment. There's a whole range of different technologies that go into a data centre that allows us to process information. That's what a data centre is. To give you some analogies, in the US, there's about nearly 6,000 data centres, depending on how you measure a data centre. In Canada, we have about 400. In Europe, there's about 750 that we can identify as standalone data centres. You can probably find more places where computers are outside of people's homes, but that's about the ratio we're looking at. [00:15:10] Trevor Freeman: And we're seeing, I think, and tell me if I'm wrong here, like all this talk about the AI proliferation, data centre proliferation, we're seeing an expansion of these. Is that we're seeing the size of these data centres expand, or we're seeing just more of them popping up? Like, what does it mean when we say we're seeing like data centre growth because of AI? What does that mean? [00:15:36] Phil Harris: Well, it's fascinating because now our worlds collide. Because the way we now think about how to describe a data centre isn't in the square footage or the number of computers. It's in how much power it consumes. And we now measure it in megawatts. It starts in 10 megawatts, or single-digit megawatts for very small data centres, into average-sized data centres in the tens of megawatts, up to now the hundreds and the gigawatts of consumption that you look at these hyperscalers. But I think we have to put this into a sort of a human scale. It helps us to put this in human scale. If I were to go back to ChatGPT, actually about now 15 months ago, ChatGPT-4, if you were to put that data centre footprint into the province of Ontario, for example, where you and I both are right now, it would be the equivalent of a million internal combustion engine cars dr…
Full show notes at the publisherTrees are a major cause of power outages. They're also a wildfire risk—when branches hit a conductor, a small spark can become a big blaze. Lynn Petesch of Overstory joins thinkenergy to talk trees, exploring how AI, satellite imagery, and vegetation intelligence help utilities prevent outages and reduce wildfire threats. Including Hydro Ottawa, who saw a 44% drop in tree-related outages since partnering with Overstory. Listen in for how we work together to keep the grid safe in an era of extreme weather. Related links Overstory: https://www.overstory.com/ Lynn Petesch on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lynnpetesch/ Trevor Freeman on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/trevor-freeman-p-eng-8b612114 Hydro Ottawa: https://hydroottawa.com/en To subscribe using Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/thinkenergy/id1465129405 To subscribe using Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7wFz7rdR8Gq3f2WOafjxpl To subscribe on Libsyn: http://thinkenergy.libsyn.com/ --- Subscribe so you don't miss a video: https://www.youtube.com/user/hydroottawalimited Follow along on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hydroottawa Stay in the know on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HydroOttawa Keep up with the posts on X: https://twitter.com/thinkenergypod --- Transcript: [00:00:00] Trevor Freeman: Hi everyone, and welcome to the summer edition of Think Energy. We are officially in podcast vacation mode. So while our normal day-to-day work continues, we're taking a brief pause from our kind of regularly scheduled episodes to recharge, to think about what's coming up in the year ahead content-wise, and just do some planning. But while we do so, we don't want to leave you without anything to listen to, so we look back at some of our favorite insights and episodes over the past year, and that is our summer rewind. So this summer, we're tackling a pretty significant and overarching theme that's really defining the current state of the energy transition, and that is the collision between digital infrastructure and physical infrastructure as it relates to our energy grid. It's this really kind of fascinating look at old versus new, traditional versus up-and-coming, and how we progress to meet the energy needs of our customer base, the growing energy needs as we electrify, as we, you know, expand, while also implementing new technology to protect our grid, protect our assets, to better manage things. So it's kind of a common theme in a lot of episodes that we have done in the last little while and a lot of the conversations that we're having. So in Part 1 today, we're kicking things off with a look at the physical world of our grid and how we're using new technology to protect it, and that is our conversation with Overstory. So we'll re-examine how we use high-resolution satellite imagery and artificial intelligence to act as kind of a shield almost, you know, helping utilities proactively manage our vegetation and reduce vegetation-to-powerline contact, which can reduce power outages, wildfires in many cases, and really has been an important tool for us here at Hydro Ottawa as well as in the utility industry more broadly. So sit back and have a listen to my conversation with Lynn Pedesch from Overstory, and enjoy this summer rewind. [00:02:26] Trevor Feeman: Welcome to Think Energy, the podcast that dives into the fast-changing world of energy through conversations with industry leaders, innovators, and people on the frontlines of the energy transition. Join me, Trevor Freeman, as I explore the traditional, unconventional, and up-and-coming facets of the energy industry. If you have any thoughts, feedback, or ideas for topics we should cover, please reach out to us at thinkenergy@hydroottawa.com. [00:02:58] Trevor Freeman: Hi everyone, welcome back. Today on Think Energy, we're going to be talking about trees. Yes, you heard that correctly—trees. I know this is a show about energy, but there's actually a very real connection between our electricity grid and those slow-growing, majestic givers of shade, lumber, fruit, and so many more benefits. Honestly, who doesn't love trees? But I'm not just kicking this episode off in my capacity as a tree hugger. Let's take a look at this through a utility lens, and I will use Hydro Ottawa as an example. Hydro Ottawa's service territory includes some very rural and very forested areas. Even our urban territory has a fairly extensive tree canopy. As a result, Hydro Ottawa trims about 60,000 trees each year. Now why? Because trees contacting power infrastructure is a big problem. Tree interference remains a leading cause of power outages for us. Strong winds force them onto our wires. Heavy snow or freezing rain builds up and weighs down branches, breaks limbs, and increases the risk that part of a tree may touch a line. And in some extreme cases, heavy storms can even send trees or branches crashing into our poles, damaging the poles. The struggle between power lines and trees—which again, don't get me wrong, we all love trees—has been going on for years. There is a constant struggle between trimming enough and getting the right trees trimmed and maintaining as much tree coverage as we can. In 2022, we identified a disruptor in this stance. The solution came through a partnership with Overstory, a company that uses satellite imagery, infrared technology, and artificial intelligence to help utilities manage vegetation and trim trees more efficiently. And the timing could not have been better. Just days after we started working with Overstory in the spring of 2022, the Derecho hit Ottawa. Our Ottawa-based listeners will remember this storm well. It was monumental in the history of our city and indeed for us as a utility. Winds reached 190 kilometers an hour. For our non-metric listeners, that's nearly 120 miles per hour. The storm ripped through poles, houses, and caused considerable damage to our city's urban forest. Overstory played a crucial role during the cleanup and in helping us level up our vegetation management strategies moving forward. We realized that the insights we got from Overstory would help improve our proactive approach to tree encroachment and hazard identification, and this is essential in this era of extreme weather events. We know that climate change is causing more frequent and more extreme weather events. According to Climate Central, the number of weather-related power outages in the United States increased by 78% between 2011 and 2021. And severe weather accounted for over a thousand outages across Nova Scotia just in the year of 2024. We want to keep you connected during these heavy storms, and that's why we're looking to organizations like Overstory. So what does Overstory do to help us keep the lights on? Well, without giving away too much, because we're going to get into the details shortly, Overstory, through a detailed analysis of the scans they do of our entire grid, identifies high-risk areas which we can then prioritize and better focus our resources when it comes to vegetation management. This level of monitoring and focus reduces the risk of trees from coming into contact with our poles and disrupting your connection to the grid. The results speak for themselves. Since partnering with Overstory, we've reduced vegetation-related outages by 44%. And that's only part of the story. As we'll discuss further, Overstory also plays a crucial role in helping utilities prevent wildfires in high-risk areas across North America. Similar to extreme weather, wildfire frequency and intensity is also increasing, in part due to climate change, expanding cities, and many other factors. And when wildfires do happen, these stories are heartbreaking. What many people don't realize is that lots of wildfires are sparked by trees making contact with power lines. And that is why Overstory plays a key role in tagging areas where those fires are most likely to ignite and spread, making it easier for utilities to prioritize trimming work and vegetation management in those areas. To dive more into how Overstory is helping us here at Hydro Ottawa and other utilities, helping us identify and act to mitigate risk associated with vegetation, I'm really excited to have Lynn Pedesch on the show today. Lynn is Overstory's Head of Customer Success and has spent the past 10 years building customer-facing teams with a specific focus on technologies that tackle the climate crisis. She began her career working for the United Nations and the diplomatic service of her home country Luxembourg, before moving into the tech sector to really work in environments where she could drive impact more quickly and at greater scale. Lynn Pedesch, welcome to the show. [00:08:05] Lynn Pedesch: Thank you. Thanks for having me. [00:08:07] Trevor Freeman: Okay, so let's start at the very top with a high-level look at what Overstory does and how the organization came to be. [00:08:15] Lynn Pedesch: Yeah, let me tell you about Overstory. I mean, we are a vegetation intelligence platform. We use remote sensing and AI to give electric utilities, including Hydro Ottawa and others, a clear system-wide view of their risk. They always do it because they want to address three things, or sometimes more, but kind of there's always a few goal posts, and it's either improving reliability, reducing wildfire risk if that is if they're in an area where that is a concern, and/or improving operational efficiencies. So Overstory very much becomes a decision-making tool for their programs. We're used mostly by the vegetation management people, operations people, wildfire mitigation teams, and they each time they want to either use a program that exists, prioritize it, reshape their work, they might be preparing for a storm, they might be working on a wildfire mitigation risk. So the company more broadly was founded in 2018 by Aniek Schouten and Indra den Bakker—this was back in the Netherlands. And they were leveraging or getting really interested in satellite imagery and were very initially using it for deforestation purposes. So the climate resilience DNA has always been with us, but like any startup, we were looking at that kind of target audience that was most interested in what we had to offer. And pretty quickly, we landed on the electric utilities. They had the most pressing need to use remote sensing at scale to solve very big problems, honestly. And so we pivoted into that space of electric utilities. And then in 2020, Fiona Spruill, who's our CEO right now, she joined us. She shaped the company into what it is today, and that is really around building safer and more reliable operations. [00:10:14] Trevor Freeman: That's great, and I want to dive into some of the details. Our listeners will know that we talk a lot about grid modernization here and talk a lot about better intelligence of what's happening on the grid in all aspects. And something we haven't really talked about and I'm excited to talk to you about today is the sort of vegetation management side of it. So really excited to get into the details, but before we do that, I'm always really curious to understand, you know, the people behind the conversations. How did you get into this area of, you know, high-tech vegetation management? I touched a little bit on your bio in the intro, but give us a sense of, you know, how did Lynn come to be in the space that you're in right now? [00:10:52] Lynn Pedesch: Yeah, I wouldn't say I grew up thinking I was going to work in this space, but I love working in it now. So actually right out of college, I went to work for the United Nations, but then in the last 15 years, I started working at high-growth tech companies, startups, and I've always been focused on leading and building CS operations, which is basically the customer success teams. They're the ones that are in front of the customers, implementing these software programs, kind of working very closely with customers, solving problems. And about four years ago, I decided that I did want to focus the rest of my career on solving the climate crisis more broadly. And I remember very clearly that I came across Overstory and there were two things that really resonated with me. One was hearing that utility-caused wildfires could be a thing of the past—like they are preventable—and the other thing was learning about this world where vegetation is the biggest cause of outages, which is, you know, I did not know before! And so I think, you know, having these very clear goals is very compelling to kind of work on something where it's so easy to understand what the big problems are. So I joined Overstory, and for the last couple of years, I've been building a team that gets really deeply embedded in these utilities, specifically with the vegetation management and the wildfire mitigation teams. And we work on their programs, we understand their programs, we help them reshape their programs, we roll out obviously the software element that is Overstory. It's been very fun and rewarding work. [00:12:30] Trevor Freeman: That's great. And I really love, you know, talking to people from a variety of areas that touch on climate change and the climate crisis, and I think there's a bunch of us who share that passion of wanting to do something. I spoke with a group of recent grads about what a green career, what a career in climate change looks like, and really it looks like whatever you want it to look like. There are so many aspects that touch on this. So kind of neat to hear how that was your passion and then you figured out where it made sense for you to enter into the climate sphere, so that's great. [00:13:06] Lynn Pedesch: Yeah, I guess when I was young, I thought you had to be a scientist to work on climate, and I think now anyone can find an angle on how to contribute to it, and I think everyone needs to help contribute. [00:13:15] Trevor Freeman: Yeah, any job can be a green job if you care about it and if you make it that. Okay, so let me get back to Overstory. Tell us a little bit about the evolution of the company. You talked about it kind of founding about seven years ago. Tell us how it's evolved and progressed over those seven years. [00:13:30] Lynn Pedesch: Yeah, so when we started working with utilities, I think at that point everyone was kind of assessing whether satellites could be a good use case for analyzing vegetation. We're now talking about 30-centimeter imagery, so the resolution of satellites has become incredible. You can really see branches, you can detect species of trees, you can see if they're healthy or not. So initially that was kind of our MO. We really were the leading provider to find out where the trees are, how close they are in terms of proximity to your network, so to the conductor, which is the risk. You know, we're looking at the terrain. If you're looking in the mountains in Colorado, you have very different terrain than maybe in Ottawa. So, you know, detecting tree species has been really interesting, detecting the health of trees, and how that decline is furthering. A lot of utilities are experiencing a lot of tree decline, die-off right now. So that was how we started. And then we started working with the really big utilities, and you had to think about this problem at scale. Now we might be scanning with satellites tens of thousands of miles at a time. And some of these utilities, they might have thousands, if not tens of thousands of trees that could pose a risk to their network. They might have had a really big, large weather event, a storm that knocked over some of their system. So at that point, it all becomes about that decisioning too…
Full show notes at the publisherThe era of top-down energy projects is over. Today demands collaboration, equity, and stakeholder engagement. And in the clean energy movement, Indigenous partnerships often lead the way. James Jenkins, Executive Director of Indigenous Clean Energy, joins thinkenergy to unpack the Regenerative Energy 2026 Report. He explores what a just transition looks like, how Indigenous communities are shaping the future, and what the industry can learn from working together. Related links: Indigenous Clean Energy: https://indigenouscleanenergy.com/ James Jenkins on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-jenkins-27787913b/ Regenerative Energy 2026 Report: https://indigenouscleanenergy.com/regenerative-energy-national-survey-2026/ Bringing it Home Program: https://indigenouscleanenergy.com/our-programs/bringing-it-home/ Trevor Freeman on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/trevor-freeman-p-eng-8b612114 Hydro Ottawa: https://hydroottawa.com/en To subscribe using Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/thinkenergy/id1465129405 To subscribe using Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7wFz7rdR8Gq3f2WOafjxpl To subscribe on Libsyn: http://thinkenergy.libsyn.com/ --- Subscribe so you don't miss a video: https://www.youtube.com/@thinkenergypod Follow along on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thinkenergypod/ Stay in the know on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thinkenergypod Keep up with the posts on X: https://twitter.com/thinkenergypod -- Transcript: [00:00] Trevor Freeman: Welcome to Think Energy, a podcast that dives into the fast-changing world of energy through conversations with industry leaders, innovators, and people on the front lines of the energy transition. Join me, Trevor Freeman, as I explore the traditional, unconventional, and up-and-coming facets of the energy industry. If you have any thoughts, feedback, or ideas for topics we should cover, please reach out to us at thinkenergy@hydroottawa.com. [00:26] Trevor Freeman: Hi everyone, and welcome back. We often talk on this show about the what of the energy transition. What needs to happen, what is happening, what technologies or initiatives are growing or up-and-coming. But it's also important to consider the how of it all. Energy systems are complex. That is something that should be clear in all the conversations we have around here, but it's not just technical complexity that we need to consider. Our energy systems are also socially, politically, and societally complex. It's not just a matter of picking the right technology and implementing it. If it was that case, we've got, you know, most of the technology we need, and we'd be in a much better position than we currently are. We have to figure out how we move these projects forward. [01:14] Trevor Freeman: Traditionally, energy projects have been these large, top-down infrastructure projects. But increasingly, we're moving into a time when collaboration, equity, and stakeholder engagement are critical components of project success. One area where this can be seen—and, in fact, it's an area that's really pushing a lot of this change—is Indigenous leadership. [01:38] Trevor Freeman: Over the past decade here in Canada, at least, we've seen a profound evolution where Indigenous communities are not just participants in the clean energy transition or kind of bystanders; they are actively leading it in many cases. That's not to say all the problems or challenges have been solved, but we're seeing a lot of movement here. And that's the topic of my conversation today. [02:02] Trevor Freeman: To help us understand the scale of this movement, I'm joined by James Jenkins. James is the Executive Director of Indigenous Clean Energy, which is a leading organization accelerating First Nations, Inuit, and Métis participation in clean energy projects from coast to coast. I'm really excited to have James on the show today because his expertise comes straight from real, actual experience on these projects. As a proud member and former CEO of the Walpole Island First Nation, James personally drove the equity development for two 100-megawatt wind farms for his community. Today, he leverages that firsthand experience along with a diverse background in consulting, local government, and academia to serve as a national champion for Indigenous clean energy partnerships. [02:54] Trevor Freeman: His organization just released their third national survey, the Regenerative Energy 2026 report, which provides a really eye-opening snapshot of how Indigenous communities are shaping Canada's energy future through innovation, equity ownership, and community-driven solutions. So today, we're going to dive into the findings of this report, talk a little bit about, you know, what a just energy transition looks like, and explore what utility and industry players can learn from these successful partnerships. James Jenkins, welcome to the show. [03:31] James Jenkins: Hi Trevor, thank you for having me. [03:34] Trevor Freeman: So, James, let's start a little bit with some background. Tell us about Indigenous Clean Energy and how your organization works to advance First Nations, Inuit, and Métis participation in the clean energy sector. [03:47] James Jenkins: Sure. Indigenous Clean Energy is a not-for-profit organization, and we've been operating for about 10 years. So we started 10 years ago with the 2020 Catalyst Program, which was designed to develop a cohort of clean energy leaders coming primarily from Indigenous communities and businesses that could really shape the future of Indigenous participation in the energy transition. So we started with a cohort. It was led by just a few staff and our founding director, Chris Henderson. And this is our 10th year, so we'll be celebrating 10 years of the 2020 Catalyst Program at our national gathering in August. [04:24] Trevor Freeman: Awesome. Congrats. [04:26] James Jenkins: Thank you so much. So the goal of that program was to really expand the opportunities, the capacity, and the number of communities engaged in clean energy. And we have seen that progress tremendously over the last 10 years. We've seen federal grant programs to support that work also emerge as major contributors, and we've seen utilities across the country get on board and try to find ways to expand Indigenous participation. [04:54] James Jenkins: So we've seen quite a bit of success, and with that success, we've grown as well. So we're now a team of about 35, and we're much larger. So we've expanded into a few other areas. One of them is youth, so we have two different youth programs. And we've expanded into energy efficiency as well, mostly under our "Bringing It Home" umbrella. [05:16] James Jenkins: And the idea behind that is we've seen the success of the 2020 Catalyst Program and clean energy leaders really pushing the envelope in terms of what is possible when it comes to Indigenous-led generation projects. So now we're identifying a gap still existing when it comes to energy efficiency. And so, in a way, we're trying to replicate the success of the 2020 Catalyst Program. We'll be running our third year of the Project Accelerator soon. So that's geared towards energy efficiency; it's an intensive training program, and it comes with a grant. [05:47] James Jenkins: And finally, we have a policy arm as well that's also very involved in engaging at the community and regional level. So that's through our Energy and Climate team, and we have a national hub that just completed a series of directional gatherings regionally. We also have a global hub as well that's active in Oceania and Latin America. [06:09] Trevor Freeman: Oh, that's fantastic. Tell me a little bit about the youth programs that you're running. [06:14] James Jenkins: So, we support youth across our programs, but we have two programs in particular that are geared towards youth. One of them is the Imagination Program, which comes with wrap-around supports and training. Right now, we're developing a micro-credential with the University of Saskatchewan for our program participants. It comes with a grant to lead a community-scale project. A good example might be a solar-powered greenhouse. Many of them are linked to schools, and, you know, we see the passion of younger members of communities that want to move these projects forward, but it's entrepreneurial in spirit. [06:49] James Jenkins: The second is called Generation Power, which is a wage subsidy program for Indigenous youth, and we pair them with employers in the clean energy field. So some of them are utilities or renewable businesses; in some cases, they're communities or Indigenous businesses that are moving forward on projects. And it's more than just a wage subsidy; we identify all of the potential barriers for Indigenous youth entering these jobs and provide those kinds of support to increase their chance of success and staying in the workforce after the placement. [07:22] Trevor Freeman: Oh, that's very cool. We've talked a few times on this show about building that next generation of energy champions and people that are focused, you know, on this new form of energy—this new energy transition or this new world of energy that we're moving into. So fantastic to see you guys participating in that. That's really cool. [07:42] Trevor Freeman: So, I want to spend some of our time here talking about the report that your organization recently released titled Regenerative Energy 2026. So before we dive into the specific data and the numbers, let's talk about, you know, just that title itself and what the document sets out to achieve. So first of all, tell us about that term, "regenerative energy." What does that mean? Why did you choose that title? [08:09] James Jenkins: Sure. So just generally, regenerative energy is the idea that these projects are doing more than producing electricity for the market and potentially bringing in revenue. They're also contributing to the broader ecosystem, which could mean the ecology of the landscape or a reduction of carbon into the atmosphere. So it's looking at the wider impacts and planning energy with that in mind. [08:33] James Jenkins: In the Indigenous context, it goes deeper than that. We're incorporating sovereignty, energy sovereignty, and acknowledging that communities are increasingly expecting to be able to move through their energy journey on their own terms. And so that could mean other outcomes in addition to just energy stability and security. It expands to food security, but also ultimately the community being able to plan its future—how does energy fit into that? [09:03] James Jenkins: I think it fits into what we're seeing in Indigenous communities in general, where there is a need to revitalize our cultures, our practices, our governance structures. We're finding that the energy sector—it's a business sector and an opportunity and an expanding sector—but there's also alignment in terms of values in many places, with communities looking to have an impact on their landscape, on the ecology, and this is a way to do that. [09:30] James Jenkins: So regenerative energy is acknowledging that there is this revitalization happening. It's not as though our communities, our governments, our nations were extinguished over the last 300 years. What does it mean in terms of revitalizing those practices, and how do all of these projects and ambitions when it comes to energy fit into that? [09:51] Trevor Freeman: Yeah, I like that description. Thanks for that, James. I don't want to put words in your mouth, but is it fair to say that the choice to use "regenerative" instead of "renewable"—which is fairly buzzy as a term, everyone kind of has renewable energy on their mind—was a deliberate choice? You're building more aspects to it; there are more facets of the description you just gave of regenerative energy compared to just renewable energy. Is that fair to say? [10:19] James Jenkins: Well, and that's true as well. And as you've read in the report, we're seeing projects expand beyond just what we would term "renewable" projects. So that was the bulk of the projects up until recently, but now transmission lines and battery storage are becoming more prominent. [10:36] Trevor Freeman: Yeah, absolutely. Great. Okay, I do want to talk to you about that. So my second question kind of at a high level around the report is, you know, one of the goals or one of the things you're doing in this report is really compiling and tracking national data around these projects. Why is that important? Why is that something that you're striving to do—to really track and compile that data? [10:59] James Jenkins: Well, in the context right now, we have a federal government that is trying to identify meaningful projects that can have an impact on the economy, have an impact on spurring economic growth in different regions. And so it's a critical time for us to broadcast information on our dataset because collectively, these projects that have Indigenous ownership and co-ownership are a massive portion of the electricity generating infrastructure of Canada, and they have a meaningful impact on the economy, but also the ability for communities to finance their own programs, to reinvest in economic development. [11:36] James Jenkins: So it's a critical time from that perspective. I think there's a need for us to be even louder because collectively as a nation, we seem to be looking for these wins that can be a shot in the arm. You know, we're worried about economic growth, and here we have many examples of projects that have Indigenous participation and that are having these benefits that are allowing different regions that are not participating in the economy in as active a way—this is a real opportunity for them. [12:05] James Jenkins: And unlike many of the mega-projects that we're thinking about right now, these have shorter timeframes, less challenges, and the risk is much more manageable in comparison. So, you know, we are trying to point out that, A, these kinds of projects—which are renewables, but also battery storage and some of these other projects—these are important for the federal government to continue to invest in because they have been investing in it heavily over the last 10 years, and that's part of the success story. [12:35] James Jenkins: But there is also a set of learnings that can be drawn from when we have so many examples of good partnerships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous organizations moving these projects forward. So I think when we look into the future as to how this should look, what does Indigenous participation look like for these mega-projects, we have a bit of a blueprint that we can draw from. [12:57] James Jenkins: And so we are trying to bring more attention to this. I think it's really step one. The federal government can pat itself on the back that it's been one of the key reasons why Indigenous participation in the energy sector has grown over the last 10 years, but it's not getting the attention it deserves in the current conversation. So I think that's why it's a really critical time, possibly for other non-government actors as well that are asking, "Well, in the current global and national framework, what is the best way to achieve climate outcomes, Indigenous participation in the economy, greater social outcomes?" And so we do want to point to this as a good news story that has a track record, and that's what the data really does—it speaks to that track record. [13:41] Trevor Freeman: Ye…
Full show notes at the publisherForget range anxiety. The electric vehicle market is evolving fast. Host Trevor Freeman welcomes back Plug'n Drive CEO Cara Clairman to unpack Canada's new EV policies. They discuss the surge in used EV sales and the truth about public charging stations. Plus, learn how low-cost salt-based batteries could disrupt the global auto industry. Discover what these massive shifts mean for transportation and the future of energy. Listen to the full episode today. Related links Plug'n Drive: https://www.plugndrive.ca/ Cara Clairman on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cara-clairman-84967318/ thinkenergy episode 71 (EV-olving Transportation): https://thinkenergypodcast.com/episodes/ev-olving-transportation/ Geotab: https://www.geotab.com/ Trevor Freeman on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/trevor-freeman-p-eng-8b612114 Hydro Ottawa: https://hydroottawa.com/en To subscribe using Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/thinkenergy/id1465129405 To subscribe using Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7wFz7rdR8Gq3f2WOafjxpl To subscribe on Libsyn: http://thinkenergy.libsyn.com/ --- Subscribe so you don't miss a video: https://www.youtube.com/@thinkenergypod Follow along on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thinkenergypod/ Stay in the know on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thinkenergypod Keep up with the posts on X: https://twitter.com/thinkenergypod --- Transcript: [00:00] Trevor Freeman: Welcome to Think Energy, a podcast that dives into the fast-changing world of energy through conversations with industry leaders, innovators, and people on the front lines of the energy transition. Join me, Trevor Freeman, as I explore the traditional, unconventional, and up-and-coming facets of the energy industry. If you have any thoughts, feedback, or ideas for topics we should cover, please reach out to us at thinkenergy@hydroottawa.com. Hi everyone and welcome back. So, any discussion about the energy transition or our efforts to reduce emissions to mitigate the impact of climate change or even just the ongoing adoption of what once might have been considered futuristic technology, inevitably will include electric vehicles, or EVs as we're going to refer to them today. Transportation is one of the major interactions with energy, especially fossil fuel-based energy that most of us have. Heating being the other one. For the average Canadian, how they move around, going to work, going to school, shopping, recreation, etc., very often involves getting into a vehicle which up until maybe 10 years ago, would almost 100% for sure have been a fossil fuel burning vehicle with a few very small exceptions. Today, while the majority of vehicles are still internal combustion engines, there is at least a noteworthy percentage of electric vehicles out there. We probably all know someone who owns an EV, or know someone who knows someone who owns an EV. EVs aren't actually all that new. The first EV showed up in the late 1800s, believe it or not, and at that point and into the early 1900s, it really could have gone either way between electric-powered vehicles and internal combustion vehicles. As we know, internal combustion vehicles definitely won out, and the bulk of the 20th century was all about internal combustion vehicles, and still today that's the dominant method of transportation. But, there is some alternate reality out there where EVs just always were the transportation method of choice. Imagine what the world would look like if that was the case here. But alas, that is not the reality we're living in. The more recent modern EV era kind of sputtered a little bit in the mid-1990s, there was a bit of an attempt, it didn't really pan out, but really got going around let's say 2008-2009, and it's been a steady crawl forward ever since. But, if you are listening to this podcast, chances are you already know all this and you've likely either skipped forward or are listening to me on two times the speed just to get through this to the important stuff, which is EV policy. You never knew you were so excited about policy. So, most of us, including governments, inherently know that the move to EVs is a good thing. It's good for the climate, it's good for consumers, they're kind of better vehicles. But, societal changes don't just happen, and they certainly don't happen fast. So, there has been a suite of policy approaches over the past couple of years or many years to help us get there and help us get there a little bit quicker. In the past year, Canada's EV policy has changed quite a bit. Availability mandates are out, and incentives are back in. Tariffs on Chinese-manufactured vehicles are mostly out, so things are definitely changing. And to help us understand these changes and what they mean, and also just to check in on the state of EVs here in 2026, I'm really excited to have Cara Clairman back on the show. Cara is the President and CEO of Plug'n Drive, a non-profit that strives to accelerate the deployment of electric vehicles to maximize their environmental and economic benefits. And they do this by engaging with Canadians to help dispel myths and fears and uncertainties around EVs using approaches like their EV Discovery Centre, mobile EV education trailer, and their EVs Are for Everyone tour. And this is really about bringing the EV to the individual, to the person, letting them test drive it, touch it, feel it, ask questions of experts. Now, Cara has actually been on the show a number of years ago where she talked to my predecessor, Dan, about the back story of Plug'n Drive a little bit. So, if you're interested in the organization, I encourage you to go back and listen to that episode. We're not going to get into too much of that here today. Cara is a fantastic individual. She's got more than 25 years of experience working in the environmental and sustainability fields, including at Ontario Power Generation where she was OPG's environmental lawyer and later in the role of Vice President of Sustainable Development. Cara was the 2017 recipient of the Women in Renewable Energy's Woman of the Year award, and the 2021 winner of the Al Cormier EV Leadership Award from Electric Mobility Canada. And as you will hear, she is a big fan of EVs, and she thinks you should be, too. Cara Clairman, welcome to the show. [05:01] Cara Clairman: Thank you so much, Trevor. I'm pleased to be here. [05:03] Trevor Freeman: So, this isn't actually your first time on the show, Cara. It's the first time you and I have spoken on this podcast, but you were on our show with my predecessor, Dan, nearly 5 years ago now, and you talked then about how you took Plug'n Drive from just an idea during your time at OPG, to really a national non-profit that's now celebrating its 15th anniversary. And for our listeners, if you're curious about the back story on Plug'n Drive, definitely dig back in the archives and listen to that episode. But, a lot has changed in 15 years, and a lot has changed even in the 4 and a half years since you were last on Think Energy. EVs have gone from kind of this niche idea you'd maybe see one or two around here and there, to, you know, maybe not quite ubiquitous and they're not everywhere, but it seems like they're going in that direction. They're a lot more commonplace. Everybody knows somebody with an EV, or you see them around most times you're out and about. Um, and they are also a very much talked about cornerstone of our national policy. It's an often-talked-about tool for decarbonization. We're going to dive into some of the specifics throughout our conversation, but just looking at the work that you and Plug'n Drive are doing from your EV Discovery Centre to your EVs Are for Everyone tour, how has your mission shifted? Are you moving from convincing people that EVs are a real thing that worked to helping navigate how to get one, what's the complex web of, you know, incentives, etc. What's the difference in your mission now? [06:36] Cara Clairman: Well honestly, I feel like it's really uh the same in a lot of ways. The big difference, as you pointed out, is that we don't really have to explain what an EV is or that it's a decent car. You know, there's some sort of what I would call EV 101 that most people already know now. And like you said, most people have known somebody, or they've at least heard of it. But I would say there's still a high percentage of Canadians that have never ridden or driven one. Uh, and so that's an experience that we find is really the key, like getting the butts in the seats is really the key to helping people get over the hump. And uh, that's sort of the experience that we focus on. We really try to pair a test drive with every event that we do and encourage people to drive so that they can see the benefits go far beyond just the savings and the environmental benefits, that they're just really super fun cars to drive, and if you're a person that likes a quiet, peppy drive, this is the car for you. [07:51] Trevor Freeman: Yeah. Are people coming to your events knowing, "I'm going down the EV path, I'm going to buy one, I need to check this out," or they're coming in kind of thinking, "What are these people doing here at this event or in this parking lot?" Like what draws people to your events? [08:05] Cara Clairman: More more of the former and less of the latter as time goes on, but it depends on the event we're at. So, if it's just they've made an appointment to come see us, which often is the case, we have an appointment system, uh, then they know a little bit, and they're thinking about it, and they want to try it. Uh, if we're just at a festival or fair, which we do, you know, we just are at some event, and they didn't come specifically to see us, uh, then we still meet a lot of people who are like, "What is this?" you know, uh, and so they're earlier in their journey. But what we find is that they need the awareness building, and then they might, you know, make the move a few years down the road, so it still helps them. It's just they're at a different step. [08:50] Trevor Freeman: Yeah, for sure. No, that makes sense. Okay, so what I really want to dive into here today with you is kind of the shifting landscape, or maybe it's already a shifted landscape, um, regarding EV policy, some of the shifts that we've seen even in the last year or two. Um, so recently, you know, we're here in Canada, the federal government repealed the EV availability standard. So, this was the standard that said we want 100% of cars sold in Canada to be zero-emission by the year 2035. [09:27] Cara Clairman: Right. [09:28] Trevor Freeman: And we're moving towards more of an incentive-based strategy. So, a demand-side push rather than an incentive uh sorry, a supply-side push. Does this transition make sense for the average Canadian? Does it risk slowing down the momentum we've built? Kind of where do you stand on on this shift in our approach to EVs? [09:49] Cara Clairman: Right. To be honest, I was a bit disappointed that they repealed what we call a ZEV mandate or ZEV requirement. We were hoping instead of sort of throwing the baby out with the bath water, they would just make the ZEV requirement maybe less onerous and extend the time or something like that, because the benefit of a ZEV mandate um is that it does require dealers to have the vehicles on the lots. And so it actually increases choice, it increases availability, and that's why you hear some people calling it a ZEV availability standard. Trying to explain it to Canadians because it got a bit garbled in the news where it was like, "We're not going to be able to choose a gas car. You're going to be required to buy an EV." Well, that was way down the road. And uh, what it really did in the early years was make sure dealers would have some. And uh, so that's unfortunate, but, you know, got to move on. So, uh, now we're we brought back uh the Feds brought back the rebate, and sales shot up. So, that's good news. And, you know, hopefully, the dealer networks will make the cars available uh in Ontario. The big challenge is that there's still a ZEV availability standard or ZEV mandate in Quebec and British Columbia, which means they get the cars first. And, you know, you do hear, "Oh, this thing doesn't work. This thing is no good." Well, then why do they get the cars and we don't? You know, so it does work. And so, unfortunately, like if you happen to be listening from Quebec or BC, you'll get more choices than we will here in Ontario, and I I, you know, I hope that that, you know, with the demand-side push that, you know, there'll be more showing up. [11:51] Trevor Freeman: Yeah, and we've been through periods where even if you wanted to get uh an EV, even if you wanted if you kind of could afford it, you'd decided this is the right option for me budget-wise, [12:03] Cara Clairman: Yes. [12:04] Trevor Freeman: you're waiting 10 months, or you can't get the option you want and and so [12:08] Cara Clairman: Right. You have to be more tolerant of color or features or whatever. We probably will experience some of that. It's very brand dependent. Like, some brands are very available all across Canada, some aren't. Uh, so it's really quite varied. Um, but um the good news is right now um availability's decent, and there's actually lots available on the used market, and maybe we'll talk about that a little bit later to give people comfort around used, because it's really a great option for people to think about. [12:49] Trevor Freeman: Yeah, absolutely. Let's definitely uh put a pin in that and get back to it. The other big shift I I want to touch on is um or at least it's a big shift that's getting a lot of attention, is the reduction of the previously 100% tariff on Chinese-made EVs down to only a little over 6% now, which effectively opens the doors to Canadians to um have access to these vehicles, so they can be sold in Canada. How do you see this impacting you know, availability and adoption of EVs? Is this going to be a game changer? Are we going to see those kinds of sub-$30,000 EVs on the market? Or is this kind of, you know, one small shift in the market? [13:31] Cara Clairman: Well, the one thing it has done is created tons of curiosity and interest. You know, everybody wants to know about it, everyone wants to see one. Um, there are EV spies, as you may know, everywhere, like EV enthusiasts who are watch, and, you know, we saw some news report that there were a few Chinese EVs on a lot, you know, north of Toronto somewhere, and people are like, "Oh, what brand is this?" and But unfortunately, we don't know uh really the answer to this question that you're asking yet. Um, we're told that the first Chinese EVs will be here in the last quarter of 2026. Uh, and we don't even know yet if they might be brands we already have, you know. They could be Teslas, they could be Volvos or Polestars. Which we already have. [14:22] Trevor Freeman: Yeah. [14:23] Cara Clairman: So, uh, we're hoping we'll see some low cost, you know, BYD or Geelys or whatever else, you know, but we don't know. Yeah. And uh, and it will be exciting to watch, and, you know, we're watching and trying to find out when the first vehicles are going to be available or shown, but nobody knows the answer yet. [14:48] Trevor Freeman: Are you getting like when you interact with people that are in the EV market…
Full show notes at the publisherElectricity Canada CEO Francis Bradley joins thinkenergy to unpack the 2026 State of the Industry report, Forging Canada's Electricity Future. Why is public trust in utilities peaking in light of extreme weather? Why is a single word in the Fisheries Act halting major hydro projects? They dive into supply chain headaches, bureaucratic red tape, and how treating the power grid like core tax-funded infrastructure can make electricity bills more affordable for consumers. Related links Electricity Canada: https://www.electricity.ca/ Francis Bradley on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/francis-bradley-icd-d-ias-a-3617802a/ Electricity Human Resources Canada: https://ehrc.ca/ Trevor Freeman on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/trevor-freeman-p-eng-8b612114 Hydro Ottawa: https://hydroottawa.com/en To subscribe using Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/thinkenergy/id1465129405 To subscribe using Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7wFz7rdR8Gq3f2WOafjxpl To subscribe on Libsyn: http://thinkenergy.libsyn.com --- Subscribe so you don't miss a video: https://www.youtube.com/@thinkenergypod Follow along on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thinkenergypod/ Stay in the know on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thinkenergypod Keep up with the posts on X: https://twitter.com/thinkenergypod - Transcript: 00:01 Trevor Freeman: Welcome to Think Energy, a podcast that dives into the fast-changing world of energy through conversations with industry leaders, innovators, and people on the front lines of the energy transition. Join me, Trevor Freeman, as I explore the traditional, unconventional, and up-and-coming facets of the energy industry. If you have any thoughts, feedback, or ideas for topics we should cover, please reach out to us at thinkenergy@hydroottawa.com. 00:27 Trevor Freeman: Hi everyone, and welcome back. Here's something you've heard me say before: the energy transition isn't coming, it's here now. And that's showing up in a lot of different ways—from the significant increase in demand that we're seeing driven by AI data centers and electrification, to the ever-increasing adoption of distributed energy resources by everyday Canadians in their homes and businesses. Even utilities looking to non-wire solutions as a strategy to employ alongside the traditional poles and wires approach to meet this growing demand. That's all happening now. 01:03 Trevor Freeman: And that really underscores the message that the time for talking about how we will eventually build out our grid to handle the energy transition has turned into the time to build and deliver on that talk. But, as with most things, it's never just that easy. This is all happening against the backdrop of an energy industry that is, to say the least, facing some pretty significant turmoil. What sector isn't right now? There's global conflict, there's a need for bold new policy direction, changing technology—these are not insignificant factors. 01:38 Trevor Freeman: And so, to help us understand where we currently are at and where immediate action is necessary, I think it's time we check in with a two-time previous guest on this show: Francis Bradley. Francis is the President and CEO of Electricity Canada, the leading voice for the electricity industry in this country. We've had Francis on the show before in the past and it's great to have him back here today to chat about some of these issues. 02:04 Trevor Freeman: Every year, Electricity Canada releases a State of the Industry report that serves as kind of a pulse check on our sector. You'll hear shortly in my conversation with Francis that there is something to the naming of these reports. In 2023, the message was "Build It". In 2024, they used the title "Getting to Yes". But the 2026 report, which was just released, has a bit of a different title: it's called "Forging Canada's Electricity Future". 02:35 Trevor Freeman: Now, to forge something implies heat, pressure, a lot of hard work. And this report does exactly that. It dives into the regulatory system that we operate in, the gaps in our labor and supply chains, and this new geopolitical reality that's pushing Canada to prioritize our own domestic production. But it's not all warnings. There is a roadmap, so to speak, in the report that specifies 18 recommendations that Electricity Canada proposes be addressed in order to help our industry thrive. As the need to increase our capacity and meet these rising energy demands intensifies, getting projects moving, getting shovels in the ground is absolutely critical. So, it's really great to have Francis here today to chat through that and talk about what's in the report, and I'm sure it'll be a great discussion. 03:26 Trevor Freeman: Francis Bradley, welcome to the show—welcome back to the show. 03:29 Francis Bradley: Oh, delighted to be back. Good to see you. 03:32 Trevor Freeman: So Francis, it's great to have you back on the show. It's always a pleasure to catch up and get, you know, your perspective, your take on what's happening in the world of energy, and particularly the Canadian energy landscape. So, we chatted just under a year ago, and I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that was a pretty tumultuous time in the world of energy, at least here in Canada. 03:52 Trevor Freeman: So, just for context setting for our listeners as a reminder: we had just come out of both a provincial and federal election here in Ontario. Our various levels of governments were responding to actual tariffs and threats of additional tariffs. There was a lot of talk about national energy projects from pipelines to east-west electricity grids. So, with that as the backdrop, how has the last year been for you and Electricity Canada, being kind of the main association representing the electricity industry in Canada? Have we seen some of those big projects move forward? Is it all talk or have things actually happened in the last sort of 10, 12 months? 04:36 Francis Bradley: Yeah, I mean, this is a—this is a really good question and it's a great place to start our conversation. You're right, things have been pretty crazy this past year. But also, from the perspective of energy and electricity, there's also been some pretty significant developments as well, particularly I'd say the people who are responsible for the things that we care about in the federal government. 05:04 Francis Bradley: So we've, you know, we've got a Prime Minister that used to be Vice Chair at Brookfield; we've got a Minister of Energy that used to chair the board of Hydro One; the head of the civil service most recently was the President of Hydro Quebec. So, you know, among all of that massive change, we also saw now a team in Ottawa that actually understands our sector and that gets the challenges that we're talking about. 05:32 Francis Bradley: So, you know, have we seen significant projects moving forward? Well, I mean, part of the challenge, of course, is projects in this sector are very, very long-term. I mean, they take a long time. These are not, you know, kind of shovel-ready projects that are just sitting on the sidelines and immediately you get a go, you can move forward. These are generational investments. But what we have seen, I think, is some real movement by the federal government and a very significant change in terms of their approach. 06:05 Francis Bradley: Bill C-5, for example—the first piece of legislation that we saw moving through—that sent a real signal that the government was serious, as serious as you can be in a minority government situation. Short of changing a large number of laws, they essentially do a carve-out for those projects of national interest—or some people call them "PONIs," Projects of National Interest. So we saw addressing, trying to move that small set of projects more quickly through the process. We saw the establishment of the Major Projects Office as a kind of a concierge for these major projects. We saw the MOU with the province of Alberta also, I think, a sign that there is a real desire to see major projects move forward. 07:01 Francis Bradley: But the challenge here—and this is what I raised when I appeared before the parliamentary committee reviewing Bill C-5—is that's all well and good if you happen to be one of those PONIs. If you happen to be the proponent for one of these projects of national interest, that's terrific; you're able to move through this project more quickly. But you know, the reality is the vast majority of the projects that are going to make a difference for the electricity sector and ultimately for Canadian customers may not rise to that level of a Project of National Interest. And so, all of the concerns that we had previous to Bill C-5 really remain for the vast majority of projects that we're going to be facing. 07:44 Francis Bradley: So, yeah, have we seen movement? Yeah, I think we've seen pretty significant movement. We've seen all of the right signals, but as I said, the government can only go so far as a minority government. Now, that's today when we're recording this, but by the time this plays, we may not be in a minority government situation anymore. But that is the reality; it is difficult for the government to get legislation through as a minority, and I'm certainly pleased that one of the first priorities was addressing "how do we get projects built?" because that's something that we've been talking about for a long time. 08:24 Trevor Freeman: And do you see—you know, obviously Canada exists within the broader backdrop of global energy politics or the energy kind of situation? There's a lot going on there right now, of course, you know, conflict in energy-producing countries. Do you see us continuing to move forward on these? So, the last year was kind of a foundation setting, figuring out how to get major projects done, and now we're moving into hopefully implementation, or have we been knocked off course? Do you see something changing significantly in Canadian energy policy and politics as a result of what's happening globally? 09:03 Francis Bradley: Yeah, you know, again, a really good question, Trevor. Because certainly the short-term challenges that we've seen with now the war in the Middle East and the roiling of markets and the significant increase, I think if anything, it's going to prove to be an even greater impetus for us. I don't think it's going to slow us; it's probably going to get us to speed up. I think it certainly will with respect to our colleagues that are in the oil and gas space, but also for electricity. 09:37 Francis Bradley: I think it's going to increase the desire that people will have to see greater energy sovereignty in Canada. And so, a lot of the issues that we've been talking about with respect to building out, meeting the future demand, and getting things built were not directly addressing Canadian sovereignty, but they indirectly address Canadian sovereignty. And over the last year with the challenges with the Trump administration, suddenly questions around Canadian sovereignty are getting more traction. So yeah, I think what's happening in the world today—certainly the most recent past—is going to prove to be, I think, even more impetus for us to want to move and move expeditiously in this space. 10:24 Trevor Freeman: Yeah, I guess something that I think has become clear to folks outside of us who kind of are in the industry is just how tied our energy reality and energy policy is to what's happening globally. And to your point, kind of that global policy, global economics—it's all intertwined and probably people are paying attention to it more now than at least in recent memory. 10:48 Francis Bradley: Yeah, and the good news, at least with respect to electricity, is we are not tied to a world market for electricity and electricity pricing the way like the oil and gas and the price at the pump. If you're filling up your car—I don't fill up my car anymore, I drive electric. But I, you know, I've got family and colleagues that are filling up and I'm hearing, you know, already feeling pain at the pump, which is, you know, the reality of having an international world market. 11:21 Francis Bradley: Our electricity market thankfully doesn't get that kind of—of an impact as a result of those changes. However, what happens in the U.S. with respect to supply and reliability certainly affects us, and it's something that we're watching closely. You know, we've seen cancellations of offshore wind projects, for example, off the East Coast of the United States. You know, we've seen a step back from a number of different types of technologies in the U.S.. So, while international affairs are not necessarily making me as concerned directly with respect to electricity, the North American picture, though, is raising questions with respect to reliability. 11:58 Trevor Freeman: We always go to interesting places during these conversations, right, Francis? 12:02 Francis Bradley: We do, I know. And I kind of—you got my brain going here. Sometimes I like to go down a rabbit hole. 12:09 Trevor Freeman: Okay, so I think that's a good context setting. That's a good place to start to understand where we are, what's been kind of going on, who knows what's coming up. But I do want to spend the bulk of our conversation here talking about Electricity Canada's 2026 State of the Industry report, and the title of that report is "Forging Canada's Electricity Future". 12:31 Trevor Freeman: So, not to spend too much time on semantics, but in previous years, you've titled these reports "Build It," "Getting to Yes" was another example. This year you've chosen "Forging." Is there a play on words there? You know, we're moving into a more high-pressure, difficult phase of the energy transition? Is there anything that we should read into that title, or am I kind of just picking at straws here? 12:56 Francis Bradley: No, you're not. We've been very intentional in terms of what we've been titling our State of the Industry. And so, you know, we've seen an evolution in terms of the thematic approach that we've been taking to this report. And so, you know, when I moved into the role of CEO, we began producing sort of these annual snapshots of the sector. They're intended to kind of lay out what we see as the current state of the electricity sector in Canada and our prescriptions for, you know, what should be done to be able to address our challenges. 13:30 Francis Bradley: And you know, if I look back over the last several years—and you noted some of the thematic approaches we've had in the past—2019 we started with, you know, it was all about "Resilience". 2020 it was about "Transformation". 2021 it was "Renewal". 2022 everybody was talking about net zero, so our theme back then was "Accelerating to Net Zero". 2023, "Build It," you noted that. 2024 was "Getting to Yes," and you noted that one as well. That was an interesting report because it really did focus on—it seemed to have a culture of "no" when it comes to "can we get stuff done?" and it attempted to address that. 14:14 Francis Bradley: 2025, last year's report, you know, as you noted, we were in an interesting place this time last year. You know, we'd just come out of an election. So at the beginning of last year, we put out our annual State of the Industry and it was focuse…
Full show notes at the publisherWhen we say 'the cloud' what we mean is 'the data centre'. Globally, data centres are projected to consume over 1000 terawatt hours in 2026. What does that mean for energy production, distribution, and consumption? Guest Phil Harris, Cerio President and CEO, joins thinkenergy to shed light on something we all rely on but may not fully understand. From efficiency to sustainability, environmental concerns to Cerio's role improving how data centres manage energy. Listen in for the future of cloud computing. - Related links ● Cerio: https://www.cerio.ai/ ● Phil Harris on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paharris/ ● Trevor Freeman on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/trevor-freeman-p-eng-8b612114 ● Hydro Ottawa: https://hydroottawa.com/en To subscribe using Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/thinkenergy/id1465129405 To subscribe using Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7wFz7rdR8Gq3f2WOafjxpl To subscribe on Libsyn: http://thinkenergy.libsyn.com/ --- Subscribe so you don't miss a video: https://www.youtube.com/user/hydroottawalimited Follow along on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hydroottawa Stay in the know on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HydroOttawa Keep up with the posts on X: https://twitter.com/thinkenergypod --- Transcript: Trevor Freeman 00:07 Welcome to think energy, a podcast that dives into the fast, changing world of energy through conversations with industry leaders, innovators and people on the front lines of the energy transition. Join me, Trevor Freeman, as I explore the traditional, unconventional and up and coming facets of the energy industry. If you have any thoughts, feedback or ideas for topics we should cover, please reach out to us at thinkenergy@hydroottawa.com. Hi everyone, and welcome back. Data centres have come up a number of times on this show, and for very good reason, they have become a key underpinning technology for so much of our lives, every time we pull out that phone from our pockets to pull up directions or buy something online or doom, scroll on your social media or new site of choice, every time you use your phone stream a movie, leverage an AI model, whatever you end up using it for, it's funny as I read this list, I'm sure there's like some university student out there who's thinking, man, what is this old man talking about? We don't use our phones for that, whatever the kids are doing these days, whatever we're doing these days with our phones, with our computers, our tablets, et cetera. All of that leverages infrastructure that most of us have never seen and, quite frankly, probably don't really understand we talk about the cloud like it's this amorphous, nebulous thing, but in reality, we're talking about real hardware in a real building that uses real energy, mainly electricity, a lot of water. And this isn't really new, like we've been leveraging centralized data centres for many years now, but what is changing is the scale of the data centres that we're seeing now, and the pace of growth in computing power that we need to do, the things that we want to do, and that our data centres are able to deliver. So just to throw a few numbers at it, the traditional data centre servers that maybe power the early days of on demand online streaming services, for example, they used anywhere from five to 15 kilowatts per rack. But modern server racks that are used to power AI searches, for example, can hit anywhere from 60 to 100 kilowatts per rack. This is great from a power output per rack perspective, but it means massive energy needs, and that is showing up in the size of load requests that we're seeing from new data centres. New data centres today are asking for service connections that are orders of magnitude higher than those built even just five years ago, globally, data centres are projected to consume over 1000 terawatts in 2026 or terawatt hours, sorry, in 2026 and just a quick kind of refresher from high school or wherever you would have learned this, a terawatt is 1000 gigawatts, which is 1000 megawatts. So 1000 terawatt hours, which is roughly equivalent to the annual electricity demand from the country of Japan, an entire country. So given all of this, there are a lot of incentives to find ways to maximize efficiency and reduce some of that energy demand, and that's where my next guest, Phil Harris and his company Cerio come into play. I'll let Phil get into the details of exactly what Cerio does, but essentially, their goal is to reimagine the data centre to maximize sustainability and reduce energy needs. Phil is Cerio's President and CEO, and has been in the networking and data centre industry for over 35 years, including at well known companies like Intel and Cisco. And I'm really excited about this conversation. One to understand, how do we make data centres a little bit more efficient, or maybe a lot more efficient, but also just to really understand, like, what are we talking about when we talk about a data centre? What is actually happening, what is physically inside these buildings, and we'll get into a little bit of that in our conversation. So Phil, welcome to the show. Phil Harris 04:13 Well, thanks, Trevor. I appreciate it. Trevor Freeman 04:13 So Phil, obviously we're here today to talk about your work building sustainable data centres, or trying to make data centres a little bit more sustainable. But before we get into that. You know, you've spent your career, you know, decades of your career at different tech giants. Let's call them in telecisco to to mention, you've seen quite a bit of change. No doubt, over your time, has that changed, like, does this industry change linearly? Does it grow fairly steady, or is it kind of big jumps? And are we on the cusp of any major shifts? What can you kind of tell us about the future of this, this sector, data, tech, etc? Phil Harris 04:48 It's interesting, I think, as companies start, and I was at companies like Cisco, for example, when it was a very small company to when it was very large company. And this should be no surprise for anybody, the bigger the company gets, the harder. It is to change, and they really find that the only way they change is when they absolutely have to, not because they want to, and that's a combination of just inertia and shareholders expectations and a whole bunch of things. So I would say that the bigger the company is, the harder is them, for them to react. And so I think small, nimble companies tend to do much better when there's a lot of transformational technology and development and changes in the overall ecosystem we live in. I think just the second part of your question, you know, I look at the current situation as a point in time where a lot of companies will have to make some significant changes, simply because we're hitting too many walls, technological walls, commercial walls, geopolitical walls, that are really sort of confining what people can do. So I think what's going to about to happen is we're about to see a significant change, and this is not atypical in the industry. If we think about back into the into the start of what we would think of today as computer science around mainframes that were happening in the 60s. You know, for about a decade and a half, two decades, there was a lot of dominance around a particular way of doing things. And then some new innovational technology came along that rapidly changed, that scaled out, and it went from a very dominant set of players to a much larger number of smaller players who could then provide more innovation and more scale and more choice. And I think we're about to see that transition occurring as well. Trevor Freeman 06:25 So is this, is there sort of like an analogous time, 10 years ago, 20 years ago? Are we on the cusp of, like, the big, the big change that we've seen before? Like, what would you compare this to? You know, in the last 2030, years? Phil Harris 06:40 Yeah. I mean, I think there's been eras of compute. And if we say, I mean, we can find analogies outside of the compute world, but let's just stay in the compute, computing science world. I gave the mainframe example as one, and then we went to what we call client server, which scaled out rapidly. Telephony. We went from large, big telephone exchanges that started in in the government space, went to very large organizations. Now, basically we've completely scaled out how we make phone calls to use that now 20th century as a terminology. Nobody really makes telephone calls anymore. And we went through this with cloud computing and the Internet, where there was a change in the approach to the way we did things that suddenly gave us a scale out mentality, rather than a scale up mentality. And I think that's what we have to key in on here. Is it that we can take some of you? I was on a panel yesterday where we were talking about scale, and I say, well, to scale or not to scale? That is not the question. It's how do we scale? Do we continue to scale up, which is the current model, or do we start to think about scaling out, which is a more distributed model? So we go from a small number of big things to a large number of smaller things. And typically in computer science, whatever you want to start, storage, compute, memory, telephony, everything we've ever done goes through this arc. Trevor Freeman 07:59 Yeah, it's it's interesting, and it's, there's obviously my brain's gonna immediately try and find those, those similarities between my world that I live in on the energy side of things. And it's the same question, like, there, there's, there is no path where we're not expanding the amount of energy we need. We're not going to be using more energy. But there are different ways to do that, and there are different paths we can take the business as usual that just grow, grow, grow, decentralized energy production and large scale transmission. Or there's a combination of like, grow those things, but also find alternative methods. More ders more sort of like close to consumer energy sources and storage, et cetera, et cetera. And people that listen to this podcast know I kind of go on ad nauseam about this. So lots of similarities. There another kind of framing or foundational thing that I want to talk through before we really get into the meat of our conversation is helping ground both myself and our listeners, and what exactly we're talking about here. So we, we all use, whether we know it or not, we use, you know, like cloud computing constantly, whether it's in our calls, how we're using the internet, using AI, more, more frequently. Now, what is the physical reality behind that? What's actually happening? What is the term data centre? What is a data centre for our listeners here? What does that look like? Phil Harris 09:26 Yeah, let's start there. That's a great question. We started recognizing that the amount of power and space required for computers in companies and government in all sorts of different applications was getting larger than we could put in a room, in a closet near maybe where people were using it. We had to sort of create dedicated space, because the power requirements, the cooling requirements, just the noise. You can't hear this, but just in my basement, I have a few different compute systems that my wife continues to tell me is keeping my neighborhood awake. The reality is the environmentals of these things became very difficult. So we created these purpose built locations that had then different requirements in terms of access and facilities and power and cooling and staffing. And so they became a new way of thinking about building compute infrastructure at a building level, not just at the individual computers themselves. So a data is usually a very large room or building, I should say that houses large amounts of compute and storage and other networking equipment. There's a whole range of different technologies that go into a data centre that allows us to process information. That's what a data centre is. To give you some analogies in the US, there's about nearly 6000 data centres, depending on how you measure a data centre. In Canada, we have about 400 in Europe, there's about 750 that we can identify as standalone data centres. You can probably find more places where computers are outside of people's homes, but that's about the ratio we're looking at. Trevor Freeman 10:59 And we're seeing, I think, and tell me if I'm wrong here, like, all this talk about the AI proliferation, data centre proliferation, we're seeing an expansion of these. Is that we're seeing the size of these data centres expand, or we're seeing just more of them popping up. Like, what does it mean when we say we're seeing, like, data centre growth because of AI, what does that mean? Phil Harris 11:24 Well, it's fascinating, because now our worlds collide, because the way we now think about how to describe a data centre isn't in the square footage or the number of computers, it's in how much power it consumes, and we now measure it in megawatts, and it starts in 10 megawatts, or single digit megawatts, very small data centres, into average size data centres in the 10s of megawatts, up to now the hundreds and the gigawatts of consumption that you look at these hyperscalers. But I think we have to put this into a sort of a human scale. It helps us to put this in human scale. If I were to go back to ChatGPT actually about now, 15 months ago. ChatGPT-4. If you were to put that data centre footprint into the province of Ontario, for example, where you and I both are right now, it would be the equivalent of a million internal combustion engine cars driving 30 kilometers a day, if you ever drive up the 401 you probably don't want to see another million cars on the 401 Yeah, but that's the amount of energy that we can think of in terms of a data centre of that scale. Trevor Freeman 12:33 Yeah, and again, kind of putting it in the electrical industry's terms, what we consider as a large load so we have a specific designation of a large load request that is anything five megawatts and higher. And like, up until recently, we would get one or two of those every once in a while, like, it's pretty rare to get a large load request. We are seeing large load requests coming in at a near constant pace now, like the number of large load requests we're getting, and a lot of it is because of this, not all because of data centres or anything like that, but a lot of them are certainly driven by that need for more more computing power, more facilities that support that. Phil Harris 13:18 That's right. And at the same time, we're seeing a demand on on energy around now home, EV charging, and other aspects of the general distribution of the power, everything's taking a step function. But if I could just say one thing to your point about before I was seven megawatts, was a high load, then we may need to change that scale. It's almost inefficient to build a data centre unless you're somewhere above the 10 megawatt range, because at that point, get somebody else to do it for you. Trevor Freeman 13:42 Interesting, yeah, and that's where it's sort of like, almost like, renting space in a data centre for a request of that size. Interesting, something that you know, I've seen kind of in your in your writing, on your on your blogs, is the idea that traditional data centres are really built for peak capacity, which absolutely mirrors the power industry. We build our electrical grids for peak capacity, and obviou…
Full show notes at the publisherHow are we preparing the next generation of energy professionals? Kieran Graham, student of the Sustainable and Renewable Energy Engineering program at Carleton University, is set to embark on his career in the energy sector. Kieran joins thinkenergy to chat about his studies, from thermodynamics to power generation, regulatory to economic aspects, and what's on the horizon for the industry and his future. Listen in for a fresh perspective on the future of energy with a next-gen energy professional. Related links: Sustainable and Renewable Energy Engineering program, Carleton University: https://admissions.carleton.ca/programs/sustainable-and-renewable-energy-engineering/ APEX Lab, Carleton University: https://carleton.ca/apex/ Kieran Graham on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kierangraham1/ Trevor Freeman on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/trevor-freeman-p-eng-8b612114 Hydro Ottawa: https://hydroottawa.com/en To subscribe using Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/thinkenergy/id1465129405 To subscribe using Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7wFz7rdR8Gq3f2WOafjxpl To subscribe on Libsyn: http://thinkenergy.libsyn.com/ - Transcript: Trevor Freeman 00:07 Welcome to thinkenergy, a podcast that dives into the fast, changing world of energy through conversations with industry leaders, innovators and people on the front lines of the energy transition. Join me, Trevor Freeman, as I explore the traditional, unconventional and up and coming facets of the energy industry. If you have any thoughts, feedback or ideas for topics we should cover, please reach out to us at think energy at hydro ottawa.com, hi everyone and welcome back. We know that we are already in this period of change that we call the energy transition, but this is not a short term thing. We will be in this period of change for years and likely decades to come. And that means that the next generation of energy professionals, so engineers, policy experts, customer focused, people, finance and so on and so on, they might spend their entire careers working on this. So I thought it would be interesting to check in with someone who's just about to enter the workforce to find out how we're preparing that next generation to dive head first into this challenge and hopefully bring innovative and exciting solutions to the table. This is a career and society defining challenge. This is something that we'll be focusing on for many, many years to come. So I really wanted to understand what is that next generation learning. Now I'm sure you'd all agree that what you learn in your formal schooling is only one small part of the knowledge base and skill set that is important for contributing in a meaningful way. I know that the things I became really excited about and passionate about as I was getting through my engineering degree really helped set my course and have led me to where I am today, and definitely was not the course I thought I was on when I started engineering school. And for the record, these things that I became really passionate exciting about weren't, you know, the fluid dynamics and soil mechanics and thermodynamics and all these courses I was taking. It was the concepts and the way of thinking and the things I became passionate about. So all that being said, I'm pretty excited today to talk to my guests about what he has been learning and how he thinks that's setting him up for a career focused on energy. Kieran Graham is in his final year of his degree at Carleton University here in Ottawa, and he's in the sustainable and renewable energy engineering program. I love the fact that we have a whole focus program on clean and renewable energy, that's fantastic. Kieran is the president of the Sustainable and Renewable Engineering Society, and he helps organize academic social and networking events for students in that program and others that are interested in sustainable and renewable energy. He has worked with the apex lab at Carleton, doing research on various carbon capture technologies, and he was also the organizer, or one of the organizers, for the 2026 Ontario Engineering Competition. Kieran Graham, welcome to the show. Kieran Graham 02:48 Thanks a lot for having me. I'm excited. Trevor Freeman 02:50 So Kieran, let's start with a little bit of background on your program at University. So you're in the Sustainable and Renewable Energy Engineering program at Carleton University. Tell us a little bit about what that program is and what you focus on. Kieran Graham 03:03 Yeah, so I will admit it's a little confusing at first, like Sustainable and Renewable Energy Engineering, the long name, and then we have two streams. So one's called Smart Technologies for Power Generation Distribution, the other one's about efficient energy conversion. So the easiest way to actually differentiate these two is electrical and mechanical. So smart technologies is electrical efficient conversion is a more mechanical. So like, if you have know anything about engineering disciplines, it's electrical and mechanical. Trevor Freeman 03:35 Gotcha Kieran Graham 03:36 Also, by the way, SREE is short form for sustainable renewable energy engineering, just to save us some fumbling over our words, in the future, perfect. Trevor Freeman 03:45 This is a very acronym heavy podcast at time, so I appreciate you spelling that out for us. So when we when we hear SREE, you're talking about the program, gotcha. So give us an idea of, like, what's the focus of the program more broadly? Kieran Graham 03:58 Yeah, so like, I'm in the electrical stream. So I take a lot of different courses at the beginning, ranging from fluid mechanics, and we take electrical courses like circuits and signals and just Electronics One. But then we also later take courses that are more SREE specific, that are more focused on learning how we are using thermodynamics to then put it through as a turbine and then create that energy. And then, how is it work, specifically with a nuclear power plant, or we even learn a little bit about natural gas, but just for context. And then, how does that differ from generating electricity with wind in a wind turbine. It's pretty similar, but like, how where's the difference? And like, how do we apply that in different scenarios? Trevor Freeman 04:48 Got you so if I could say that back to you. You know, when I was in energy or engineering school, I learned a lot about those fundamentals. I learned, we know, we did thermodynamics, we did all that kind. Of stuff we just mentioned, but the application to power generation, and the renewable aspect of it, the sustainability side, that was all stuff I learned later in my career. You're building that into your programs. Kind of built that into what you're learning. So you're learning the more traditional engineering side of things, the thermodynamics and how this stuff works, but in the context of power generation, I assume, you know, like application of power generation, like how the grid works, things like that. Kieran Graham 05:28 Yeah, exactly. So we take a little bits of courses that other programs will take, and then I got, first we're taking those same courses, and then we take other courses that are really specific, and we apply them to sustainable and renewable energy engineering. The other thing is, later in our degree, we also apply things on a more higher level, like energy is kind of like a high level topic. There's so many things that are happening and there's a lot of regulatory and economic aspects to it. So we have to look at, like, the energy market and like, yes, like nuclear fusion is like a great option if it works and if it's economically viable. And you know, nuclear has its own regulatory aspect, so we have that coverage of information and knowledge later in the years. Trevor Freeman 06:17 Gotcha so. And for our listeners out there who are not kind of engineering nerds like Kieran and I. One of the things how I describe engineering more broadly is that it's sort of a systems thinking approach to things. So understanding, what are my inputs? What's the result of those inputs? What does that mean for the output? What are the feedback loops? And so what I'm hearing you say, Kieran, is that it's bringing that into the energy sector, the energy industry, which is fantastic, like, really exciting to hear that this is, this is what you're learning, and this is what the next sort of generation of engineers is being taught right now. How did you end up in this program? What drew you to this particular field of engineering? Kieran Graham 07:01 Yeah, so it's a little complicated, because when I applied to university, I knew I wanted to stay in Ottawa, and my parents both went to Carleton. My grandpa worked at Carleton like when it was first established, so I had deep roots there. And in my mind, Carleton is a superior University in Ottawa. I know that's controversial, but, you know, it's okay. But anyways, I applied to three different engineerings at Carleton, and my first choice was actually aerospace engineering, because in high school, it was kind of like a this was the prestige of making aerospace engineering. And I actually got in and my first year I was in aerospace engineering, but at Carleton, first year, engineering is all general. So after first year, I decided that my goals, and I don't want to talk down to my aerospace colleagues, but my morals and my aspirations were more set towards a sustainable and renewable energy engineering focus. So sustainable renewable energy engineering was my second choice going into Carleton, so it's a pretty easy switch in second year, but from my childhood, I had an aunt who worked for Greenpeace Canada and also just learning about sustainability in my house and at school, this just seemed like a natural, good choice. Trevor Freeman 08:28 My journey, and we won't get into the details of my journey, but it echoes that a lot of kind of having an idea going into engineering school and at some point, realizing that maybe this doesn't line up with my values, or what I want to do, the impact that I want to have. And that kind of gets into my next question of, you know, generally, the engineering profession is built around having an impact, a positive impact on society, on people, and using a, like I said, systems thinking approach to that. That's sort of the bar that we try and live up to. So, you know, you talked about wanting to have an impact. What does that impact me? Or what is having a positive impact mean for you, and how do you see yourself contributing as you're nearing the end of your education, at least formal education side of your undergrad? Kieran Graham 09:14 Yeah, so I actually just took my engineering professional practices course, which I learned about the code of ethics and how the engineers duty is paramount to serving the public. And I think that actually really resonated with me as much as you know, the course is a lot of just talking about regulatory stuff, it actually was refreshing and good to hear that that's like the regulatory view on what engineering should be, because my personal goals are very much to have a positive and strong impact on society, and specifically like my local community. You know, my family's deeply rooted in Ottawa, so I want to have a good, positive impact. Impact on Ottawa. So I guess when I switched from aerospace to sustainable energy, I decided that, like, there's a climate crisis right now, and I just saw the opportunity to create a large positive impact within engineering, which I was really enjoying and helped solve those problems of having that net zero or clean energy solution, which was being so, like, stressed upon within, like, my whole life, Trevor Freeman 10:31 That's great, yeah. I mean, it's, it's definitely, in my opinion, and I think this has been echoed a lot on this podcast, is, you know, the energy transition, the climate crisis, and sort of our reaction to that is definitely, the defining challenge of our of our time right now, and certainly, certainly your career, probably moving forward in this field. So looking at the energy transition, what skills or knowledge do you think you've developed throughout the last couple of years in your undergrad that have prepared you to contribute to this. You know, rapidly changing industry that the electricity sector, the energy sector of today is not the same as it was five years ago, and it won't be the same in five years. So coming into it at this point, what do you think you're bringing to the table that's going to help contribute to that? Kieran Graham 11:23 Yeah. So, I mean, it's the whole point of the program. And you know, people running, I'll shout out Ahmed Abdullah, a professor who's really been heading the SREE program. And so the, really, the big goal of SREE is like to be multidisciplinary, and being able to approach all the different aspects of this climate crisis and energy transition. You need to be able to understand how, like, I said, like the mechanical thermodynamics and fluid dynamics work, but also understand how a electric generator works, and then how transmission works, and need to understand, like, what's the point of creating solar in the desert, if you have to then transfer it all the way to, I don't know, somewhere in Europe, or something like, those are the large scale aspects that you need to be able to understand. The other thing that's also really important is just having the knowledge of understanding how like load profiles work and how data analysis and understanding like this is what a good load profile looks like. This is a problem like the duck curve or problems like this, like that, we as three engineers really understand, like how these different problems are created, and then how we can fix them and where they're being affected, like the duck curve in California, and like in Canada, we have a winter peaking system. Like all these problems are different, different aspects that we are very knowledgeable on and already have a base understanding of. And I think that's what's really important and helpful going into this industry. Trevor Freeman 13:04 Yeah, that's great. Has there been a time during your program, during your undergrad, or a project that you've worked on that has really kind of changed the way you view energy or the electricity grid, or open your eyes to something that you weren't aware of before, really kind of, yeah, drove your passion for it? Kieran Graham 13:27 Yeah, so, you know, there's been many problems and projects that I've had throughout my degree, and you know, the view and impact on my motivation has been very hopeful and very doubtful in equal amounts. But I would say maybe more helpful hopeful in the in the future, just because sometimes in school, things get a little stressful and blow up in proportion. But I'd say my biggest hopeful, I guess, and changing my my view of things would be my capstone project. So the capstone project that I'm working on currently is focusing on a net zero 2050 Ottawa. And how are we going to prepare for that? How are we going to handle the generation for that? How are we going to get energy places? How are we going to handle the winter peaks of electrifying, heating. How are we going to deal with EVs? It's a never ending puzzle slash scavenger hunt of finding data and how do things work together? How do we piece it together? Yeah, it's been a great challenge, but also really opened my eyes up to how all these, these different sectors that I've been learning about in my degree,…
Full show notes at the publisherTrees are a major cause of power outages. They're also a wildfire risk—when branches hit a conductor, a small spark can become a big blaze. Lynn Petesch of Overstory joins thinkenergy to talk trees, exploring how AI, satellite imagery, and vegetation intelligence help utilities prevent outages and reduce wildfire threats. Including Hydro Ottawa, who saw a 44% drop in tree-related outages since partnering with Overstory. Listen in for how we work together to keep the grid safe in an era of extreme weather. Related links Overstory: https://www.overstory.com/ Lynn Petesch on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lynnpetesch/ Trevor Freeman on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/trevor-freeman-p-eng-8b612114 Hydro Ottawa: https://hydroottawa.com/en To subscribe using Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/thinkenergy/id1465129405 To subscribe using Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7wFz7rdR8Gq3f2WOafjxpl To subscribe on Libsyn: http://thinkenergy.libsyn.com/ --- Subscribe so you don't miss a video: https://www.youtube.com/user/hydroottawalimited Follow along on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hydroottawa Stay in the know on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HydroOttawa Keep up with the posts on X: https://twitter.com/thinkenergypod ----- Transcript: Welcome to thinkenergy, a podcast that dives into the fast, changing world of energy through conversations with industry leaders, innovators and people on the front lines of the energy transition. Join me, Trevor Freeman, as I explore the traditional, unconventional and up and coming facets of the energy industry. If you have any thoughts, feedback or ideas for topics we should cover, please reach out to us at thinkenergy@hydroottawa.com, Hi everyone. Welcome back. Today on thinkenergy, we're going to be talking about trees. Yes, you heard that correctly. Trees. I know this is a show about energy, but there's actually a very real connection between our electricity grid and those slow growing, majestic givers of shade, lumber, fruit and so many more benefits. Honestly, who doesn't love trees? But I'm not just kicking this episode off in my capacity as a tree hugger. Let's take a look at this through a utility lens, and I will use Hydro Ottawa as an example. Hydro Ottawa service territory includes some very rural and very forested areas. Even our urban territory has a fairly extensive tree canopy. As a result, Hydro Ottawa trims about 60,000 trees each year. Why? Because trees contracting power infrastructure is a big problem. Tree interference remains a leading cause of power outages for us. Strong winds force them onto our wires. Heavy snow or freezing rain builds up and weighs down branches, breaks limbs, and increases the risk that part of a tree may touch a line, and in some extreme cases, heavy storms can even send trees or branches crashing into our poles, damaging the poles. The struggle between power lines and trees, which, again, don't get me wrong, we all love trees, has been going on for years. There is a constant struggle between trimming enough and getting the right trees trimmed and maintaining as much tree coverage as we can. In 2022 we identified a disruptor in this dance, the solution came through a partnership with Overstory, a company that uses satellite imagery, infrared technology and artificial intelligence to help utilities manage vegetation and trim trees more efficiently. And the timing could not have been better. Just days after we started working with Overstory in the spring of 2022 the derecho hit Ottawa. Our Ottawa based listeners will remember this storm well. It was monumental in the history of our city, and indeed for us as utility, winds reached 190 kilometers an hour. For our non-metric listeners, that's nearly 120 miles per hour. The storm ripped through poles houses and cause considerable damage to our city's urban forests. Overstory played a crucial role during the cleanup and in helping us level up our vegetation management strategies moving forward, we realized that the insights we got from Overstory would help improve our proactive approach to tree encroachment and hazard identification, and this is essential in this era of extreme weather events. We know that climate change is causing more frequent and more extreme weather events. According to Climate Central, the number of weather related power outages in the United States increased by 78% between 2011 and 2021 and severe weather accounted for over 1000 outages across Nova Scotia just in the year of 2024 we want to keep you connected during these heavy storms, and that's why we're looking to organizations like Overstory. So what does Overstory do to help us keep the lights on? Well, without giving away too much, because we're going to get into the details shortly, Overstory through a detailed analysis of the scans they do of our entire grid, identifies high risk areas, which we can then prioritize and better focus our resources when it comes to vegetation management, this level of monitoring and focus reduces the risk of trees from coming into contact with our poles and disrupting Your connection to the grid, the results speak for themselves. Since partnering with Overstory, we've reduced vegetation related outages by 44% and that's only part of the story, as we'll discuss further, Overstory also plays a crucial role in helping utilities prevent wildfires in high risk areas across North America, similar to extreme weather, wildfire frequency and intensity is also increasing, in part due to climate change expanding cities and many other factors. And when wildfires do happen, these stories are heartbreaking. What many people don't realize is that lots of wildfires are sparked by trees making contact with power lines, and that is why Overstory plays a key role in tagging areas where those fires are most likely to ignite and spread, making it easier for utilities to prioritize trimming work and vegetation management in those areas. To dive more into how Overstory is helping us here at Hydro Ottawa and. And other utilities helping us identify and act to mitigate risk associated with vegetation. I'm really excited to have Lynn Petesch on the show today. Lynn is Overstory's, Head of Customer Success, and has spent the past 10 years building customer facing teams with a specific focus on technologies that tackle the climate crisis. She began her career working for the United Nations and the diplomatic service of her home country, Luxembourg, before moving into the tech sector to really work in environments where she could drive impact more quickly and at greater scale. Lynn Petesch, welcome to the show. Lynn Petesch 05:34 Thank you. Thanks for having me. Trevor Freeman 05:36 Okay, so let's start at the very top with a high level look at what Overstory does and how the organization came to be. Lynn Petesch 05:45 Yeah, let me tell you about Overstory. I mean, we are a vegetation intelligence platform. We use remote sensing and AI to give electric utilities, including Hydro Ottawa and others, a clear, system wide view of their risk. They always do it because they want to address three things, or sometimes more, but kind of, there's always a few goal posts, and it's either improving reliability, reducing wildfire risk, if that is if they're in an area where there is a concern, and or improving operational efficiencies. So Overstory very much becomes a decision-making tool for their programs were used mostly by the vegetation management people, operations people, wildfire mitigation teams, and they each time they want to either use a program that exists, prioritize it, reshape their work. They might be preparing for storm. They might be working on a wildfire mitigation risk so the company, more broadly, was founded in 2018 by Anniek Schouten and Indra den Bakker. This was back in the Netherlands, and they were leveraging, or getting really interested in satellite imagery, and were very initially using it for deforestation purposes. So, the climate resilience DNA has always been with us. But like any startup, we were looking at that kind of target audience that was most interested in what we had to offer. And pretty quickly, we landed on the electric utilities. They had the most pressing need to use remote sensing at scale to solve very big problems, honestly. And so we pivoted into that space of electric utilities, and then in 2020 Fiona Spruill, who's our CEO right now, she joined us. She shaped the company into what it is today, and that is really around building safer and more reliable operations. Trevor Freeman 07:33 That's great, and I want to dive into some of the details. Our listeners will know that we talk a lot about grid modernization here and talk a lot about better intelligence of what's happening on the grid in all aspects, and something we haven't really talked about, and I'm excited to talk to you about today is the sort of vegetation management side of it. So really excited to get into the details. But before we do that, I'm always really curious to understand, you know, the people behind the conversations. How did you get into this area of, you know, high tech vegetation management? I touched a little bit on your bio in the intro, but give us a sense of, you know, how did Lynn come to be in the space that you're in right now? Lynn Petesch 08:12 Yeah, I wouldn't say I grew up thinking I was going to work in this space, but I love working in it now. So actually, right out of college, I went to work for the United Nations, but then in the last 15 years, I started working at high growth tech companies, startups, and I've always been focused on leading and building CS operations, which is basically the customer success teams. They're the ones that are in front of the customers, implementing these software programs, kind of working very closely with customer solving problems. And about four years ago, I decided that I did want to focus the rest of my career on solving the climate crisis more broadly. And I remember very clearly that I came across Overstory. And there was two things that really resonated with me. One was hearing that utility caused wildfires could be as thing of the past, like they are preventable. And the other thing was learning about this world where vegetation is the biggest cause of outages, which is, you know, I did not know before. And so I think, you know, having these very clear goals is very compelling to kind of work on something where it's so easy to understand what the big problems are. So I joined Overstory, and for the last couple of years, I've been building a team that gets really deeply embedded in these utilities, specifically with the vegetation management and the WiFi mitigation teams. And we work on their programs. We understand their programs, we help them reshape their programs. We roll out, obviously, the software element that is Overstory. It's been very fun and rewarding work Trevor Freeman 09:40 That's great. And I really love, you know, talking to people from a variety of areas that they touch on climate change and the climate crisis. And I think there's a bunch of us who share that passion of wanting to do something. I spoke with a group of you know, recent grads about what is a green. In career. What is it? What does a career in climate change look like? And really it looks like whatever you want it to look like. There are so many aspects that touch on this. So kind of neat to hear how that was your passion, and then you figured out where it made sense for you to enter into the climate sphere. So that's great. Lynn Petesch 10:15 Yeah, I guess when I was young, I thought you had to be a scientist to work on time, yeah. And I think now anyone can find an angle on how to contribute to it. And I think it needs everyone to help contribute. Trevor Freeman 10:24 Yeah, any job can be a green job if you care about it and if you make it that okay. So let's get back to Overstory. Tell us a little bit about the evolution of the company. You talked about it kind of founding about seven years ago. Tell us how it's evolved and progressed over those seven years. Lynn Petesch 10:41 Yeah, so when we started working with utilities, I think at that point, everyone was kind of assessing whether satellites could be kind of good use case for analyzing vegetation. We're now talking about 30 centimeter imagery. So the resolution of satellites has become incredible. You can really see branches. You can detect species of trees. You can see if they're healthy or not. So initially, that was kind of our m-o we really were the leading provider to find out, where are the trees, how close are they, in terms of proximity to your network, so to the conductor, which is the risk. You know, we're looking at the terrain. If you're looking in the mountains and in Colorado, you have very different terrain than maybe in Ottawa. So detecting tree species has been really interesting, detecting the health of trees, how that decline is furthering. A lot of utilities are experiencing a lot of tree decline die off right now. So that was how we started. And then we started working with the really big utilities. And you had to think about this problem at scale. Now, we might be scanning with satellites, hundreds, 10s of 1000s of miles at a time, and some of these utilities, they might have 1000s, if not 10s of 1000s, of trees that could pose a risk to their network. They might have had a really big, large weather event, a storm that knocked over some of their system. So at that point, it all becomes about that decisioning tool. Everything starts becoming a prioritization, and I think that's now where we're really leaning into is making not just surfacing the data, but making it very actionable. Utilities have a lot to deal with. They deal with very tight budgets, they deal with crew constraints. They might have an aging workforce, their regulatory pressure, they're really vulnerable to storms. Increasingly, there's a lot of wildfire exposure. So everything becomes a decision of, where should I focus my intention? Where can I get the biggest bang for my buck? What should I do? What should I not focus on? And that decisioning is where we really want to be a key player in. Trevor Freeman 12:44 Absolutely. And looking forward, I know I'm kind of we're jumping the gun here. We haven't gotten into the details of what you do. But looking forward, what is your vision for, kind of the future of this space and how it's going to continue to evolve? Are you mature as a company yet, or as a sector, or is it still a lot of growth to happen? Lynn Petesch 13:01 Yeah, I think vast majority utilities are now leveraging remote sensing. It could be lighter, it could be drones, it could be satellites. So that has become a pretty established tooling within the sector. I think what our vision really is, is providing utilities that shared resilience, first picture of risk. So you know, we imagine a world where you can, kind of like, see the emerging risks, and you can start becoming proactive. Being proactive in the space of vegetation management has been really challenging. You never know where the next tree is going to fall. And over the last couple of years, customers suddenly have access to this risk across their territory so that they can start being proactive about it. As a matter of fact, that was a key use case, also with the team at Hydro Ottawa, is to start launching these proactive programs. And I think when we think about it, we get very excited about the world in which anyone from the field crews to the vegetation managers to the operation folks to the execs, to the regulators, the commu…
Full show notes at the publisherIt's a new year, so we're unpacking what 2026 could bring for Canada's energy sector. Host Trevor looks back at 2025, from shifting federal policy to rapid AI adoption. Then he scans the horizon: faster major project approvals, an east–west grid push, and new hydro and small modular reactor investments in Ontario. He also touches on AI-powered DER programs, battery storage, and wider support for industrial decarbonization. Plus a quick note on the podcast's new pace. Related links ● Independent Electricity Systems Operator (IESO): https://www.ieso.ca/ ● Save on Energy program: https://www.saveonenergy.ca/ ● Trevor Freeman on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/trevor-freeman-p-eng-8b612114 ● Hydro Ottawa: https://hydroottawa.com/en To subscribe using Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/thinkenergy/id1465129405 To subscribe using Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7wFz7rdR8Gq3f2WOafjxpl To subscribe on Libsyn: http://thinkenergy.libsyn.com/ --- Subscribe so you don't miss a video: https://www.youtube.com/user/hydroottawalimited Follow along on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hydroottawa Stay in the know on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HydroOttawa Keep up with the posts on X: https://twitter.com/thinkenergypod --- Transcript: Trevor Freeman 00:00 Welcome to a thinkenergy short hosted by me, Trevor Freeman. This is a bite sized episode designed to be a quick summary of a specific topic or idea related to the world of energy. This is meant to round out our collective understanding of the energy sector, and will complement our normal guest interview episodes. Thanks for joining and happy listening. Hi everyone, and welcome back and Happy New Year. Welcome to 2026 this is the first think energy podcast episode of this new year. Happy to be here with you. I'm your host, Trevor Freeman. So last year, we started off 2025 with a little bit of a look forward at some of the energy stories we might see throughout the year. And I think this goes without saying, 2025 was a pretty eventful year when it comes to energy and politics and all things associated with that certainly had lots of twists and turns, more than any of us expected. But I kind of think that's just the new normal in all things this during this time of history, but certainly when it comes to energy as well, I think we should just expect every year to be unexpected, lots of twists and turns. So I think the best way to start this one is to look back at some of the things we said we were keeping our eye on at the beginning of last year and see how they turned out, and see whether or not our predictions or guesses were correct and kind of what happened throughout the year. So just for a little bit of context, when we recorded this episode last year, Justin Trudeau, Canada's Prime Minister at the time, had just resigned the leadership of the party and as prime minister. So we knew that a new leader was coming for the Liberal Party, and likely a federal election was on the horizon. And at the time, the Conservative Party in Canada was much more popular with voters according to polls, and it looked very much like there would be a new government, a new federal government, but that is not what happened. And I'm sure Canadians will know that is not what happened. So after Justin Trudeau resigned, the liberals climbed in the polls. They chose Mark Carney to lead them, and not long after they won the election. Now in the episode last year, I had said that should the Liberals stay in power, which seemed like a long shot at the time, but should the Liberals stay in power? We knew what their energy policy was. They would keep the carbon the price on carbon. They would invest, continue to invest, in clean energy infrastructure and continue working towards their net zero goals. They had been working on that that was kind of a main pillar of the liberal party's approach to governing, and that felt like a safe bet. But even that did not come to pass. On his first day in office, Mark Carney canceled the price on carbon, and soon after that, he paused the previous government's EV target, or target to achieve certain sales on electric vehicles, and just recently, he has signed an MOU to work with Alberta on a new bitumen pipeline. So that is a little bit different than what we expected, should a Liberal government continue? So why is all this happening? Well, this, this isn't a politics podcast, so we're not going to get into all the specifics, but plainly stated, the government is saying they want to position Canada as a leader, both in clean energy, but also economically. And there are some economic pressures that the government is under, and this is what they are saying that is the best way to move forward in that so we'll get to some of the outlook on the new government, or not so new anymore government, but the current government shortly. But let's have a look at some of the other things that we said might happen for 2025 last year, we noted that utility companies would likely continue to use AI to streamline their processes and monitor infrastructure and just really take more advantage of AI. Personally, I can say that AI has moved forward in ways that we couldn't even predict last year, at least that, you know I couldn't predict last year. I'm sure there's folks out there who totally saw where this saw where this was going, but AI really is taking off in our personal lives, certainly in the workspace and definitely in the utility space as well. So we saw some of that come true, but we also see that AI is capable of way more than that in the energy sector, like all sectors of the economy and all areas of society are really looking at new ways to use AI and figure out what's the best way to integrate this into our business. How do we take this from pilot projects to, you know, actual core parts of our business? So that's continuing for sure. We also said that electricity companies or utility companies would continue to invest in. Grid modernization, and that certainly is happening. In August of 2025 the federal government announced a plan to spend over $13 million to update Ontario's power grid, with five major projects on the horizon, which is a huge investment, and investment of this size is really intended to make the system more reliable and help manage projected electricity demand. And you know the other thing, and I'm sure I've talked about this before on other episodes, so you'll be aware that hydro Ottawa is still in the in the process of getting approval for our next five-year plan, which has big investment in reliability and modernization and supporting continued electrification. And of course, we talked a little bit about the trade conflicts with the US, and you know how Canada is responding to that. And certainly, that was a major piece of 2025 it really formed a lot of the policy, or influenced a lot of the policy of both our federal government as well as provincial government when it comes to energy projects, it's increasing that look kind of east to west, rather than north to south. So making sure that we have good interprovincial energy cooperation and collaboration. And certainly, we've saw some progress on that throughout 2025 so on the sort of provincial side of politics, again, I'm in Ontario here, so we had suggested that we would likely see a provincial election in 2025 and certainly that's exactly what happened. The Ontario Conservative Party won another mandate, and part of their approach since they've come back into power, or one that new mandate is to look to expand clean energy, look to expand our nuclear fleet in particular. And we'll talk a little bit more about this in a little bit. So that's kind of a summary of the 2025 outlook that we did a year ago. Now let's get into what might we see moving forward in 2026 and again, you know, just the caveat here, this isn't a politics podcast. This is strictly about energy. So going to try not to weigh in on one side or the other of some of these issues, just highlighting what we might see moving forward. So, first off, major projects. So in 2025, this sort of newly elected Prime Minister of Canada, Mark Carney, founded the major projects office. This department looks to streamline the approval process for what they consider nation building projects. You know, trying to help take the approval process for those projects to be like a two-year decision rather than a five year decision under that kind of previous process that it went through. On the website for this the Liberal Party states that they open the major projects office in part to build clean energy infrastructure quickly, and of the 11 nation building projects that they've announced so far, they are categorizing eight of those 11 as clean economy projects. On top of these, Mark Kearney reiterated his commitment to building an East West electricity grid, which would link those our provinces together and help, like I said earlier, help that flow of electricity east to west, you know, between provinces improve, rather than, you know, right now, we have a lot of great north south connections between us and the United States. So the intent is that these projects will really position Canada as a leader in clean energy, help us achieve our own carbon reduction and net zero goals and ensure that we can manage growing demand for electricity. So we're in very early days of those projects yet, and what I'm highlighting here is that we expect to see a lot more information about those projects, about how they're going to proceed, timelines, etc, during the course of this year, and likely even see some new ones get added to that to that current list. So speaking of major projects, our next item that we're keeping an eye on is the Alberta to BC pipeline. This definitely has been a big news item in the latter part of 2025 and as we move into 2026 we expect to see a lot more about it and hear a lot more about it. So near the end of 2025 the federal government smart Carney signed an agreement with Alberta's Premier. Alberta's government, led by Danielle Smith, and this agreement acknowledges the plan to collaborate on and expedite the approval process for a new pipeline, which will transport oil from Alberta to the coast of BC. And the federal government is calling this a nation building project, and it would streamline the review process for this pipeline. So really make it a lot easier to get through the various hurdles in order to actually be built. And sort of initial timelines are saying Construction is expected to start in 2029 So still a few years out. But this pipeline was controversial before the agreement was signed. So this pipe. China has been on the books, or, you know, in the plans for a while, and it was controversial to start with, and this agreement has, you know, only made it more so it was really skyrocketed this project into the public's eye, and there's a lot of controversy around it. Once the announcement went public, Liberal MP, Stephen Gilbeau resigned from the Prime Minister's cabinet citing the government's decision to walk back their climate commitments. So this is definitely controversial, mainly because a new pipeline will increase fossil fuel production by, you know, at least a million barrels per day is sort of the current estimate, which is counter to Canada's stated target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and achieving net zero emissions by 2050. In addition, BC's Premier, David Eby, also opposes the project, arguing that the federal government moved ahead without meaningfully considering BCS concerns British Columbia's concerns, particularly around environmental risk and the spill response on BC's sensitive coastline and on their marine ecosystem, which would be put at risk by adding another pipeline in the area that they're talking about. In addition to that, many indigenous people in BC and elsewhere stand against the pipeline, and the government is still looking for indigenous stakeholders as part of this project. Now, Mark Carney and Danielle Smith both say they want Canada to reach its net zero target by 2050 but even after the deal was signed, Alberta announced some changes to its industrial carbon pricing mechanism that, you know, in a sense, weakened that tool, which a lot of people are kind of pointing at to say, clearly, climate targets are not a key driver in consideration in this. And so this there's a weakening of the climate tools that we do have in place is not a great sign, and we'll leave it at that. So there's a few caveats to this deal. First, the pipeline is only supposed to move forward if there's real progress on carbon capture. In other words, the pipeline and large-scale climate capture are kind of being treated as a package. So in theory, you shouldn't get one without the other. But carbon capture is yet to be implemented at scale. It's not clear that it's actually a viable solution, something that can actually have a meaningful impact at that scale. So it remains to be seen whether or not that that can actually happen second. And this is a big one, the pipeline needs a private sector partner to actually build it, and nobody stepped up for that yet. So it's important to know that this agreement between the federal government and the Provincial Government of Alberta is just to help streamline the process. Should a private sector partner come along to actually build this, the federal government's not saying they're going to fund it and build it, which is sort of contrasts with how the previous Liberal government traded a pipeline many years back. But we won't get into that here. So all that to say, don't expect any actual movement or shovels in the ground on this one anytime soon. And certainly, as this progresses, there will be lots of legal challenges, and sort of you know, there are, there are people on both sides of this, but we will hear a lot more about this in 2026 it's going to be a big news story. Things are going to happen, and we'll hear both from proponents of the pipeline as well as opposition to the pipeline throughout this year, it will definitely be a big energy story here in Canada and even beyond that, Okay, next up investments in Ontario, so let's look a little bit closer to at least home. For me, on a greener note, Ontario will expand its clean energy sector in 2026 the government has announced several new partnerships with indigenous groups, including two large scale hydroelectric dams in northern Ontario. We talked a little bit about that in a previous episode, and they've also committed $4.7 billion to refurbish and update existing hydroelectric facilities to make sure that they can continue to provide clean electricity well into the future. So some of these new stations, there's the Nine Mile rapids project and the Grand Rapids project. They are coming online, you know, at a time when we really do need additional capacity on our grid. So ISO, as I've talked about many times, ISO is predicting that by 2050 we'll see a 75% increase overall in the province. But specifically in northern Ontario, demand for electricity will increase by over 80% and to meet that demand, there's, you know, this is an all tools in the toolbox. Kind of approach here, in addition to all the other great things that are happening, distributed energy resources, energy efficiency, etc, we also do need more infrastructure, more generation. The government also wants to expand Ontario's nuclear fleet. This is a government that's very keen on using nuclear. Energy and expansion of our existing nuclear assets a…
Full show notes at the publisherIn Part 2 of the Holiday Rewind, Trevor revisits five standout episodes from thinkenergy in 2025. The conversations focus on renewable energy, from Distributed Energy Resources (DERs) and building decarbonization to energy storage, district energy, and the policy forces shaping it all. This episode reflects on how renewables are becoming personal, scalable, and central to Canada's smart energy future. Listen in for a thoughtful look at the momentum we've built and the progress we made. Related links Episode 163 (How Distributed Energy Resources (DERs) are reshaping the grid): https://thinkenergypodcast.com/episodes/thinkenergy-shorts-how-distributed-energy-resources-ders-are-reshaping-the-grid/ Episode 150 (Decarbonizing Canada's buildings with the Building Decarbonization Alliance): https://thinkenergypodcast.com/episodes/decarbonizing-canadas-buildings-with-the-building-decarbonization-alliance/ Episode 152 (Capturing lightning in a bottle with Energy Storage Canada): https://thinkenergypodcast.com/episodes/capturing-lightning-in-a-bottle-with-energy-storage-canada/ Episode 154 (Reimagining heating and cooling with district energy systems): https://thinkenergypodcast.com/episodes/reimagining-heating-and-cooling-with-district-energy-systems/ Episode 149 (Looking ahead at 2025 clean energy trends): https://thinkenergypodcast.com/episodes/looking-ahead-at-2025-clean-energy-trends/ Trevor Freeman on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/trevor-freeman-p-eng-cem-leed-ap-8b612114/ Hydro Ottawa: https://hydroottawa.com/en To subscribe using Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/thinkenergy/id1465129405 To subscribe using Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7wFz7rdR8Gq3f2WOafjxpl To subscribe on Libsyn: http://thinkenergy.libsyn.com/ --- Subscribe so you don't miss a video: https://www.youtube.com/user/hydroottawalimited Follow along on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hydroottawa Stay in the know on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HydroOttawa Keep up with the posts on X: https://twitter.com/thinkenergypod --- Transcript: Trevor Freeman 00:00 Welcome to thinkenergy, a podcast that dives into the fast, changing world of energy through conversations with industry leaders, innovators and people on the front lines of the energy transition. Join me, Trevor Freeman, as I explore the traditional, unconventional and up and coming facets of the energy industry. If you have any thoughts, feedback or ideas for topics we should cover, please reach out to us at think energy at hydro ottawa.com, hi everyone and welcome back. Welcome to the second of our special year end holiday rewind episodes that we do here on the think energy podcast, I'm your host, Trevor Freeman, in our last episode, we looked at five conversations or snippets of conversations that we thought, you know, helped shape the way we think about the grid, everything from politics to grid modernization to large scale investments, what Hydro Ottawa in particular is proposing to invest in our grid, but Today is all about the fuel that powers our clean energy future. And I don't mean all the candy and gingerbread and all the sugar that we're going to eat over the next little while, although those help too. I'm talking about renewable energy, solar, District Energy Systems, how we're using distributed technologies to really transform the way we generate and manage and use power here in Canada. Think of this episode as a bit of a, you know, warm fireside reflection on the progress that we've made, the momentum we're carrying into the year ahead. But also keep in mind how far we have to go. We've got more work to do, and 2026 needs to be another year of focusing on that. But today we're going to revisit portions of, you know, five conversations from 2025 that really show how renewable energy isn't just a trend, it's an accelerating shift that's reshaping our homes and our businesses, our communities and even the grid itself. So let's jump right in with our first clip. So today we're going to start with a clip that's close to my heart, because I talk about distributed energy resources all the time, and you guys hear me talk about that all the time with guests and in some of the solo episodes that I do, it's one of the clearest signs that renewable energy is moving from kind of the fringes of the grid, the very large centralized systems to really write on our own rooftops and backyards and on our businesses, DERs represent really that bottom up renewable revolution. So rooftop solar, home batteries, smart EV chargers and more, these are becoming technologies that our friends and neighbors and us, even the listeners of this podcast, have and are using to add real clean energy to the grid and using it in smarter ways. So here's a moment from my distributed energy resources episode that looks at how DERs are becoming those practical tools for resilience, for decarbonization and just for everyday energy use. So let's dive into what some of the reasons are why someone would want a der there's a couple of different reasons. The first is for backup during an outage. So using solar panels, especially if paired with a battery, can give you some backup if there's an outage from the grid, whether that's a storm or an accident or something like that, that backup power can be focused on your key devices or systems or appliances, or if your storage is big enough, or your system is big enough, it may be used to power your whole home for a period of time. Of course, if you're using one of those non renewable sources that I mentioned, like a fossil fuel power generator, for example, then your backup supply can last longer, really, as long as you've got fuel. But it's not clean, so you will be producing carbon emissions. One emerging technology that we'll likely see more of in the future is using an electric vehicle for this purpose. So while there's only a few different models that allow this right now, the Ford F150 is one of them, and there are some safety and regulatory considerations before you go ahead and do this, we can expect to see more of this in the future as the technology advances and it becomes a bit more widespread. Another reason for DERs is financial. Installing a der can actually help you save money every month, whether that's just by reducing what you consume from the grid, or by pushing back unused generation to the grid for credits, and I'll touch on this a little bit more shortly. Finally, if we're talking about those renewable DERs, they produce clean energy. So that's carbon free emissions, free energy. And if you are concerned about your carbon footprint, you're trying to decarbonize and reduce the amount of emissions that you cause. Renewable DERs are a great way to do that. You can lower your carbon footprint by reducing how much you draw from the electricity grid and any carbon emissions that are associated with that. You know what I love about this is just how simple. Empowering. It truly is. Renewable energy isn't industrial scale anymore. You know, everybody can at least envision themselves playing a part in the renewable transition. There's incentives out there to support putting renewables in the business case. Is starting to make sense for homes, for businesses, it's becoming local. And as these DERs grow, they don't just decarbonize homes, they also strengthen resiliency, and, you know, support the other drivers that people have for their energy, having more control over it, having resiliency and backup during outages, etc. And this theme of people having more agency and control over their energy really ties into the next clip that we're going to show as well. We're revisiting again we played this on the last holiday rewind, but we're revisiting our conversation with the Building Decarb Alliance about buildings. Buildings are one of Canada's largest sources of emissions. They're also one of the biggest opportunities for renewable driven change. So in this conversation with Brian Flanagan, we talk about how renewable energy and electrification, so from heat pumps to solar grid integrated building systems, how these things are reshaping the way we heat and cool and power the places that we live and work. And in this clip, I really think it captures the scale of the challenge and the optimism of the transition. You really can't overstate the importance of buildings in our lives. We eat, sleep, work, learn and socialize in buildings, among many, many other things, a huge percentage of our lives takes place inside buildings. In fact, most of us probably have to make a conscious effort to actually spend time outside of buildings. I know that I try to make a point of spending time outside every day, and I have to be conscious about it, because it might not otherwise happen. And as a result of that, centrality in our lives, buildings are major users of energy. Some estimates say that around 30 to 40% of energy use in Canada is associated with buildings, and they're also a major source of greenhouse gas emissions. So around maybe 18% or so in Canada. That means that the buildings themselves and the way we build them, the way we heat them, the way we use them, are an important part of our efforts to decarbonize and to further the ongoing energy transition. Bryan Flannigan 07:24 We tend to focus on kind of four main areas, making sure that there's policy support at various levels of government, and understanding which policies might be effective and which ones might be less so, and trying to advance the ones that are high leverage, looking at the grid impacts of electrifying buildings. Because it's undeniable that if you switch from fossil combustion of fossil fuels to electricity, you require a clean electricity system that has to have the capacity and be robust enough to support that. So we want to be clear about that. We want to really address that in a cogent sort of way, and then really mobilizing and activating the sector to implement these changes and to find the solutions, because many of the solutions are at the intersection of different subsets of the of the sector, whether it's banking and finance, or whether it's development community or the utilities, every market actor has a role to play to find solutions. Is very rarely one sub sector that can really act to, you know, to overcome a barrier. And so we try to work at the intersection of these different groups, and by convening the players, we can roll up our sleeves and kind of get to that. And then, last but not least, you know, this is a very complex sort of question in terms of, how do we get there? What are the pathways? It kind of reminds me of nutrition, medicine, things like that, where, you know, at one instance, it's great to eat eggs, and another instance, terrible to eat eggs, and then it's good to eat eggs again, because the evidence is shifting right, and we have to follow the evidence. We have to understand that the systems are complex and that various investments in the grid will alter the landscape. And so we're working really hard to increase the analytical capacity of the sector, to model and to be able to understand how this will really play out when you have exponential sort of technological advancement coming to play, and you know, different investments and different dynamics that are bearing out as the sector decarbonizes, which is, it's really complex, and so we need better tools to be able to grapple with that. So those are the four sort of main areas, and it's a heavy lift. We arrive on the scene with great humility, recognizing that we stand on the shoulder of many, many other organizations who have come into the space, trying to take a slightly different approach by bringing all the players together and trying to find some common understanding of how we how we get this done. You know, we have to do something different. We've been doing energy efficiency for four decades, give or take with the programming that we've had, and it's been very effective. I don't think there's any more old T 12 light bulbs anywhere that worked. That's great, but we need to do something different now to get fossil fuels out of the buildings for heating purposes, right? That's the goal. Trevor Freeman 09:53 So what resonates most for me about Bryan's message is the idea that buildings aren't obstacles to decarbonization. They're really. The engines for it, as the renewable electricity systems we have our buildings will become smarter, cleaner, more efficient, and as we talk about we spend a lot of our time in buildings. And so when we think about grid interactive homes to solar ready construction and thermal storage, the building sector is really becoming a major driver, or has the potential to become a major driver of renewable transformation. So speaking of storage, this next clip is a revisit of the conversation that I had with Justin Rangooni from Electricity Storage Canada, and we explored one of the biggest enablers of renewable energy growth, which is battery storage, because, you know, let's face it, the sun isn't always shining and the wind isn't always blowing in the right direction. And with batteries, you can really create flexibility and stability for your renewable systems. And ultimately, that comes down to possibility. So my conversation with Justin really walks through how these battery systems both utility scale but also behind the meter, kind of more individual sized unlock far more renewable energy by making it dispatchable, resilient, responsive, et cetera. And I think in this next clip, we really capture that beautifully. Justin Rangooni 11:16 Okay, so the best way to think of it is. There's an analogy that one of our members had always said, and we continue to use it when we talk about energy storage. And the great things that can do is that it's like bacon. It makes everything better. I don't eat bacon, but I take I understand the concept, and what that means is, if you look at it from a grid management point of view is that we have all in Ontario, we're lucky to have a pretty clean grid. If it's nuclear power, or it's water power, or it's intermittent generation like wind and solar and even some gas too, which is which is near zero, low, low carbon, and we don't have coal, so it's a clean grid, and energy storage can make that better in the sense that it will optimize those generation assets so we're not wasting it. So those days before we would hear about when energy is needed but the wind's not blowing, or the sun's not shining, or we don't need the energy and we have to spill water, or, you know, we may have to power down a ramp, down a bit of the nuclear ramp, or the natural gas units. Now, energy storage can make sure we don't waste that now we can collect that power when it's done, when it's when it's being done, when it's being made, and we're holding it for when it's needed. And from a grid management that is the real key. That is the game changer that energy storage provides. And if we break it down, down to the customer themselves. You know, you're trying to think of now, not just helping keep the lights on. We're also talking about your rates now in terms of, now, we can kind of defer those investments in terms of more generation, because now you have energy storage that's getting more out of it. We're also talking from the distribution side of poles and wires. Maybe you don't you can defer those investments a little longer with more distributed, connected energy sto…
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