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Journalist Markham Hislop interviews leading energy experts from around the world about the energy transition and climate change.
Welcome to episode 279 of the Energy Talks podcast. I'm energy and climate journalist, Markham Hislop. Dan Balaban is the CEO of Greengate Power, a Calgary based developer of wind and solar projects. His company has developed 1.5 gigawatts of renewable energy projects in Alberta. Now this may come as a surprise to folks outside of Alberta, but Canada's oil and gas province is leading the country in renewable energy construction.
Markham:One gigawatt of wind and solar was installed in 2022, and 2 gigawatts were, scheduled for 2023 before premier Danielle Smith implemented her 7 month moratorium on renewables development last August. When that happened, I wondered what Dan thought of the pause, as the premier called it, When she ended the hard moratorium last week, then replaced it with so many rules that experts are calling them a soft moratorium, I knew it was time for another interview. So welcome to Energy Talks, Dan.
Dan:Thank you for having me.
Markham:Well, you know, this is it's very timely. It's been a a couple of years since I talked to you last, but we always save the best for last. That's that's my argument here. I wanna break this into 3 parts. And so I wanna describe them up front so people know what's coming.
Markham:First of all, we're gonna talk about what happened before the moratorium, pre moratorium development, why Alberta has great potential for for wind and solar, and what your company has been doing for the last 16 years. Number 2, I wanna talk about the Alberta power grid. We've done a number of interviews on energy talks recently. Gerhard Schlage, a couple of weeks ago, he's the chief technology officer for Hitachi Energy. Josh Tucker from, Burns McDonnell down in the States who installs battery storage at utility scale.
Markham:Lots of these kinds of folks who are describing what a power what has to be done to a power grid in order to integrate large quantities of of intermittent generation like wind and solar, and Alberta's not doing it. So I wanna talk that's the second thing. Then the third thing is where does the industry go from here? I wanna get your views on that. So let's start at the beginning.
Markham:Can you give us kind of an overview of what came before that fateful day in August in 2023?
Dan:Perhaps I could, relay a bit of, my experience. So I'm the CEO of Greengate. We've been developing renewable energy projects, primarily with our focus on Alberta for 17 years now. So, you know, had a bit of a of a long time now, in this industry. So, Alberta was actually one of the first places in North America to deploy, utility scale wind, back in back going all the way back to the nineties.
Dan:So we're actually a pioneer, in this space. But, you know, our industry really started, taking off, here in Alberta, really, on the back of some policies that were put in under the Notley government, where they, you know, procure procured, renewable energy and proved that it could be done at prices that were surprisingly low and really broke the narrative on, you know, the idea that it was a choice between cost or clean. You could have both. You could have, clean energy and also, you know, at a really low cost. And, you know, continuing on with that, you know, during the Kenny tenure, the government was largely hands off of on the renewable energy sector.
Dan:Alberta's got phenomenal renewable energy resources. We've got the only open power market in the country. And combine that with the growing need for large companies to, meet their net zero targets, we started seeing corporate renewable procurement taking off in Alberta. You know, companies like Amazon and Microsoft that started, entering into long term contracts, with renewable energy projects directly, like I said, to meet their net zero, targets. So, all that combined over the last several years, Alberta went from, you know, very early on being a pioneer to, you know, over the last few years, being the leader in Canada in renewables growth, one of the top destinations for renewables investment, in North America, largely on the on the back of free market principles.
Dan:And, unfortunately, that's changed recently.
Markham:Just as background for our, our other Canadian listeners and those in the the US and Europe who listen as well, Alberta is unique. It's the its power sector was began deregulation in the late 19 nineties, and it basically has a market where if you build the generation and you're an approved developer and you build a, let's say, a wind or solar project, you have the right to connect to the grid and to compete in that wholesale market. Is that correct?
Dan:That's correct. As long as you know, if you could make the make the numbers work, nothing's stopping you.
Markham:Exactly right. So, that was for the big companies that you mentioned, and there are many others. The Royal Bank, for instance, was one of the the early customers that entered into a power purchase agreement. And these are what yeah. Typically, I think they're 15 or 20 years, aren't they?
Dan:Yeah. It it depends on the specific arrangement. Long long term. Yeah. Multiyear contract.
Markham:And and so and then, ASO makes the call, you you bid in at a certain price, and the cheapest get called on first, and then they go up the stack. Is that how it works?
Dan:Yeah. That's yeah. That's generally how it works. And, yeah, these, these arrangements with, corporate customers, you know, guarantee a fixed revenue to to projects.
Markham:Now what happened was and this is very interesting because I get that in the rural areas that there were was a fair amount of opposition to some of these projects, and this is not specific to Alberta. We see this all over the place. You know, nimbyism is alive and well. You know, Quebec had tremendous opposition to some of its to its transmission project down into, New England, for example. We've seen it all over, all over the US with various projects, pipelines.
Markham:You when you build something big, there's always gonna be somebody who who opposes it. And so in Alberta, people were upset because they they think that that solar, for example, was, taking a good, you know, prime agricultural land. They were worried. So I get a lot of people apparently don't like wind turbines, you know, and they're and they're ruining their view of the mountains, those sorts of things. So on the other so the the premier called for a 7 month moratorium, a pause, she said.
Markham:We're gonna just pause. You know, nobody else gets to go into the queue at the moment. But then she proceeded to spend months bashing the the unreliability of wind and solar, and then even went so far as to spend $8,000,000 of government money to run ads in Eastern Canada, you know, saying that that, promoting this kind of technology would lead to blackouts and, you know, freezing in the dark. I mean, I just it was it was an in my view, it was a very unreasonable thing to do, while the the rules were being reviewed by the Alberta Utilities Commission. This was it was a very curious thing.
Markham:And then, of course, you brought in the the new rules last week. So give me your take kind of on the messaging coming out of the government and the the the rules that, we now that your industry has to operate under?
Dan:Well, I think the renewables moratorium was totally unnecessary and, you know, an extreme move. It was like taking a jackhammer to a nail. I have no problem with the idea that the there were certain things about the industry that needed to be reviewed, but that could have been done, concurrent, with the industry continuing to progress. Putting in a moratorium was just a terrible signal and, had, you know, ripple effects that the industry's still dealing with today. But, you know, the government did end up lifting the moratorium on the timeline that they said that they would.
Dan:But, unfortunately, there's still, you know, a number of questions that remain, you know, even with the new rules. But really what they were trying to address was a number of specific issues. You know, one was, what happens at the end of life of these projects. They want to make sure that there's money set aside for reclamation. Again, I think it was reasonable to to look at it.
Dan:And, you know, so, you know, there's something in place for that. Dealing with, agricultural land use, you know, I mean, I think it's ultimately up to farmers, you know, what they, you know, do with with their land. So I guess there's a bit of, potential conflict with, you know, private land, land ownership rights. But, you know, such is the case. You know, ViewScapes, that one's a a little bit problematic and still quite confusing.
Dan:You know, the idea that, you know, renew wind in particular, you can see from far away and, like you said, affects the view of the mountains. Exactly what that means, this 35 kilometer buffer zone, you know, don't know what that means. And then there was a, you know, last piece, which is supposed to come out, which is renewables on Crown Land, which is still, still, an open issue. All in all, I think what this means is there's gonna be a lot less, land in Alberta to develop new renewable energy projects on going forward. And, the permitting process is gonna be less clear, more risky, take longer.
Dan:So fewer projects gonna take longer. I think, ultimately, it's gonna slow down the future growth of the industry.
Markham:Yeah. I should point out that Simon Dyer of the Pembina Institute did a quick calculation, and he says that the government's rules will exclude wind and solar from 76% of the land available in the province, which they it leaves and it and it not only that, it takes out the best the land with the best solar resources and wind resources. So, I wanted to just quickly address your issue. Well, it was unnecessary. The review was unnecessary because in the, the Alberta Utilities Commission, which is the regulator here, has within its powers and municipal governments have within their authorities the ability to address most of the issues that the moratorium was supposed to address.
Markham:You this could have been done with public hearings. It could have been done with submissions. It could have been done tweaking existing rules, maybe some some new regulations promulgated by the the government. There were plenty of ways to do this that didn't include bringing the industry to a crash industry to a crashing halt and sending terrible messages, just terrible signals to developers like yourself and the people who are funding these, the investors. And I'm gonna take a wild guess here and say that folks like you are not crazy to be putting their capital on the line given the amount of uncertainty that has been now introduced by what is supposedly a really hyper pro business government.
Dan:So I think it's important to understand what you know, where the, you know, the particular impacts are, in my view. So first off, yeah, it's, you know, it's a negative signal. You know, that has ripple effects. It clearly shows the seems to be a negative bias against, against this industry for whatever reason. But now, you know, if you look at, you know, the actual, impacts, what this really does is it affects new renewable energy development.
Dan:So projects that are yet to be, yet to receive their permits. But, you know, there still are quite a number of projects, in the province that have permits, that aren't affected by these rules and, you know, still haven't haven't been built. So, you know, I don't see this killing, the industry. What I see this having done is killing the renewable energy boom that we've seen in this province. The industry will continue to grow, but, I don't think we're gonna ultimately realize our full renewable energy potential as we have been over the last number of years.
Markham:Now somebody brought this up on social media the other day, and I went over to the ASOS site. And the the argument is that there's 40,000 megawatts of capacity in wind and solar currently in, awaiting approval. So are these projects that have been proposed, a lot of them are solar. Are these they've been proposed, but they haven't yet received the permit you just mentioned?
Dan:Correct. Yeah. You know, that that list that you're referring to has projects that are at various stages of maturity. Yeah. So, yeah, not all not all of those are permitted.
Dan:Some of those would be. Some of those would be permitted, not, you know, not having, yet been built. But the reality is, a lot of projects that are in the queue ultimately aren't going to come to fruition. You know, still quite a number will, but, yeah, just because there's a queue doesn't mean that all those projects will be built. But I think it's a really good indication of the level of interest there is in, investing in this sector, in this province.
Markham:Well and let's talk about why that is. I'll refer as I often do to some of the economic modelers that I've talked to who say, look. We're gonna electrify our economies. This is a global trend. We're by 2050, developed economies like Canada are going to require 2 to 3 times as much electricity generation as they currently have, and that's because we're we're we're shifting we're electrifying transportation, so electric vehicles.
Markham:We're electrifying building heating, which is the heat pumps, and and then we're also looking at maybe, electrifying industrial processes as much as we can. All of that takes a tremendous amount of electricity, and most of the we have 3 hydro provinces, BC, Manitoba, and Quebec, really, the big ones. And, BC, for sure is is run out. It's only gonna build one more dam. Manitoba can build maybe a few more.
Markham:Quebec still has a fair amount of capacity, but that doesn't help Alberta. Alberta still has, you know, a lot of industry. Most 76% of the electricity consumed in Alberta goes to industry and big commercial. So there there needs to be a lot more power, clean power generated in the province. Okay.
Markham:We we need this expansion. This is not just a climate issue. It's an economic issue. And I wanna talk about the grid now Because as listeners hear from me regularly, I'm interviewing experts who are saying and I'll I'll maybe refer to a, International Energy Agency presentation from 2 years ago that I found on integrating renewables into power grids, And what it said is there are 6 phases. Phases 1 and 2 are very small amounts of of variable electricity generation that the operators can cope with through project you know, their projecting projections and, you know, selling and buying and and so on.
Markham:But once you get into phase 3, and that's where Alberta is in phase 3, you have to begin the process of reengineering your grid. The the Americans call it modernizing their grid. Right? They're they're doing a lot of this, and and you need battery storage. You need, you need inner ties, as you say, trade between east west within Canada.
Markham:You need market reform. You need grid enhancing technologies so you can send more power over creds. There are dozens and dozens of these technologies and things that need to be done as you scale up the amount of variable electricity generation in on your grid. Alberta, to the best, I've talked to some experts folks, and I'm being told that Alberta's not doing this. So on the one hand, we've got, you know, wind wind and solar growing.
Markham:On the other hand, nobody's doing what needs to be done at the grid to accommodate all of this, and that falls into Danielle Smith's bailiwick because they are at the end of the day, they set the policy and the regulations for the for the regulator and and the direction for ASO. Okay. So that's a long winded, bit of blather on my part, man. Give me your take on my hypothesis.
Dan:Well, the electricity system is, fundamentally changing, and it's, you know, the the mix of technologies that, are generating electricity. And and like you pointed out, the growing, uses, for electricity going forward through the electrification of everything, building, industrial processes, electric electric vehicles, you know, now technology like AI and, crypto mining. There's gonna be a lot more electricity, that we need going forward ultimately. But, you know, I I think I think it's been been framed in a, you know, in a very adversarial manner. Like, I think this is all this is all a symptom of a of a of a larger problem, which is, you know, the politics of division and, which applies to energy.
Dan:Seems like it's being presented as though we need to pick sides on this issue. It's either oil and gas or renewables, when I ultimately believe it's and we can be developing our our oil and gas and our, renewable energy resources. We need all forms of, of electricity, going forward. And, you know, I think I think another issue is we're not really, we don't seem to have consistent durable agreement on what the destination is. Right?
Dan:So, you know, we have changes in political leadership and, you know, complete change of direction. You know, this this latest example with, the UCP here in Alberta and a renewables moratorium, which is the exact opposite of a renewables boom, which we'd experienced before. But if, you know, if we agreed on the ultimate destination that we're trying to get to, then we can be investing in those things that we ought to be investing in. And, you know, unfortunately, the transmission system is something that has been falling behind. But we also have to, you know, be sympathetic of the situation the system operator is in.
Dan:The system operator has a mandate to provide reliable, electricity to Alberta to Albertans, and it's basically the mandate for every system operator. You keep the lights on all the time, with very little tolerance for any kind of, you know, outages. And, that creates a a an a risk averse approach to a future development. And, you know, we need we need to we need to set the, you know, the right conditions so that, the system operators are interested and, and, supportive of the future. I think that needs to come from leadership to ultimately say this is where we're gonna get to.
Dan:Let's try to come up with the solutions to get there. Like you said, there's there's all sorts of all sorts of them. Energy storage is a big piece that that we're missing here in Alberta, but, we've been waiting for a long time for the policy to be sorted out to enable private investment in, energy storage. You know, same thing with, transmission buildouts. You know, cost is a really big concern, but we, you know, we have growing needs for electricity, and all we end up doing is pointing the finger at each other on whose whose fault it is.
Dan:At at the end of the day, we need to build out a system, and invest in the future.
Markham:Dan, I'm gonna push back on this a little bit because when we say we disagree or we point fingers, we're not pointing fingers. There's only one group that's pointing fingers, and that's pretty primarily the government. I mean, I follow this pretty closely and you know, because, Danielle Smith and the UCP do more than just regulate the electricity system. There's the there's the oil and gas, is a is a big issue. Coal mines coal mining is is a big issue.
Markham:And the the premier has said, oh, we have this energy emissions reduction and energy development plan. It's not a plan. It's not doesn't even resemble a plan. It I've read the thing, and it it is a list of supposed accomplishments or things that they might wanna do at some point. It's all very vague and it's all written like a brochure.
Markham:This is not the way other jurisdictions go about planning their power grids, And we can argue about whether Texas is better than California and California is better than Arizona and and so on, but in the states, they have an institutional framework to do this. They have FERC, the Federal Electric Energy Regulation Commission at the top. It's a federal. They've got regional transmission organizations. They have smaller organizations for planning, like some of them on the Pacific Northwest that I interview occasionally, And and they have a mechanism where people can get together and they can plan the future, and they can do studies, and and they can debate these kinds of things.
Markham:And and it it's it's a little chaotic, and they don't always get it right, but at least they're doing it. And instead in Alberta, it's like they wanna freeze it in time, freeze the system in time, don't ever change it, and somehow that's going to help us accommodate these all of these the change that you and I both agree is taking place. So I know you're you have to deal with the regulator, you have to deal with the government, and you have to be careful what you say. I don't. And I think I think some plain speaking, which supposedly Albertans are fond of, I think some plain speaking is required.
Dan:Yeah. No. I, I certainly agree that plain speaking, is required on this issue. But I think, I think we need to recognize that the answers are often in the middle. Like, we we're we're we're, presented a a problem, and we're given 2 choices.
Dan:You solve it this extreme way, or you you take, the other extreme way. The answer is in the middle to actually find solutions to this. They don't make very good sound bites. You know, it's a very good sound bite to say, oh, we're gonna all freeze in the dark, you know, in these cold temperatures. The reality of the situation is we need a diversity of generators in the mix, a diversity of technologies.
Dan:There's no one technology that is reliable, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. If you wanna keep the lights on in the middle of the night in the in the cold, you need to have a bunch of generators. When we had the grid alerts, we had natural gas generators that failed under the cold, and we had some renewable generators that weren't producing. So that combination created a grid emergency. But if you look at how long that grid alert actually lasted on those particular days, it wasn't for very long.
Dan:It was a number of hours. Well, you know what? Energy storage. Battery storage is perfect to provide the duration of, of energy that would have solved, these particular problems. You know, another thing that solved it, you know, a very crude, mechanism of demand response.
Dan:Yeah. That's why we all
Markham:got brought that up.
Dan:Yeah. We we all got an alert on our phones. I turned off a bunch of lights. We all did the same thing. Grid alert, averted.
Dan:Those are examples of things that can be implemented to deal with this thing. But the the fighting back and forth and the pointing fingers, you're right. I do we. I didn't mean to include us in that we. It was being polite.
Dan:Yeah. There's finger pointing going on.
Markham:The and and as I wrote in yesterday's column, ASO, the Alberta Electric's, system operator, has done the hard work here. They've in in 2022, I interviewed, Miranda, Keating Erickson, who's the VP of markets for ASO, and this they had just released a study on net 0 by 2035, and they model 3 scenarios. So scenario 1 is lots of natural gas with carbon capture and storage and some renewables. Scenario 2 is roughly half gas, and half renewables. And then number 3 is, mostly renewables and a little bit of gas with carbon capture and storage.
Markham:And the implication is if we're going to in as Albertans talk about the options available to us, here are 3 that already modeled out. We have costs associated with them. We know how those costs are gonna be allocated. We know some of the technologies that the ASO included in their modeling that that are available, and they didn't include very many, frankly. There's a lot more that could have been done.
Markham:But, hey. You know, you you do what you can. Right? So there is a way right there with that report to structure the conversation and the negotiations in Alberta, and it got completely ignored. Nobody but energy media sorry.
Markham:I'm gonna thump our tub a little bit here. Nobody but energy media even referenced that report or referenced the scenarios in the modeling done by AASO. Who better who better to do that work than the system operator itself? So we have that there, and we don't even talk about it, and I think that is symbolic. It's symptomatic of the kind of culture that you're talking about that prevents these conversations, prevents the the right conversations from taking place within the actors and within the industry.
Dan:I, I agree completely. You know, there's there's various scenarios. A lot of work that that's, that's been done, on this issue. But, unfortunately, it's public consumption of this issue and, seems like decisions aren't being made on easy to consume sound bites. And the electricity system can definitely not be summarized in a sound bite.
Dan:It's, very complicated. There's a lot of different, considerations, a lot of different technologies, a lot of different, solutions. And I think I think if we had the will, there is certainly a way. But the longer we drag our feet on this particular issue, you know, the harder it's gonna be to achieve it on the timeline.
Markham:And that is a good segue into the 3rd, part of this interview, which is where do we go from here? And I'll just toss it out to you. Where do we go from here?
Dan:Well, I think, you know, there's the simple reality that it looks like the renewable energy industry in Alberta won't be grow growing at the same rate going forward as it as it had in the past. But, you know, if you look across the country, there's lots of other places in Canada where they're trying to encourage, renewables growth. You know, British Columbia, Ontario, Quebec, the Maritimes, you know, plans you know, plan earlier plans elsewhere. So, renewables will will continue to grow here in Alberta, just not at the same place, across Canada and other places. But, there are there are things that we could be doing in Alberta, I think, to improve our prospects if, you know, we'd like to chat chat about that.
Markham:Well, I wanna talk a little bit about BC because you mentioned it. BC, when, the form new government came in in 2017 created Clean VC. So they had a plan. And then there was some criticism of the government saying, look. You haven't set the policy framework for BC Hydro, which is the is not quite a monopoly, but it's pretty much a monopoly, and and it's a lot of hydro in in, BC, I think, 97% of their of their generation.
Markham:But a couple of months ago, they released BC Hydro releases 10 year capital plan. It's gonna spend $36,000,000,000 over 10 years, and it now recognizes that the only way it can generate enough clean electricity to meet the targets and to meet where the economy is going they're they're forecasting 2% load growth. That's a lot of load growth over time. Is they're going to build they're going to contract with First Nation developers, with communities, and with, independent power producers and developers like yourself, and they're going to then BC Hydro will enter into PPA agreements and purchase that electricity and combine it with the big batteries they call hydroelectric dams, and the very thing you suggested with inner ties is what they're going to do inside their their own grid. And I'm sitting there when I was reading the plan, I was thinking, well, Dan Balaban's gonna be talking to BC Hydro because why they want the kind of services that you provide.
Markham:They want what you do, whereas Alberta's sending out the exact opposite. And so there is an and Quebec is do Quebec Hydro is is doing the very same thing. Manitoba Manitoba Hydro is beginning to experiment. So there's a lot, as you said yourself, lot of ex the stuff going on except in the place where it should be.
Dan:Well, I think it's a modern miracle that, you know, Alberta, the heart of oil country, has been leading, you know, the country and, one of the leading places in North America for renewables growth. But, you know, all things ebb and flow. I've been in this industry for a law, you know, a long time now. And, you know, there's been periods of, you know, relative growth, relative stagnation. I haven't, ever seen a self inflicted wound like this particular one.
Dan:So that's so that's a little that's a little different. But, yeah, I think, you know, the renewable energy industry is something that's growing all over the world. And there's, there's gonna be ebbs and flows in in in specific markets. At the moment in Alberta, it looks like, you know, excitement will be dampened at least, you know, for for a while here. But, you know, excitement's picking up elsewhere.
Dan:But it's just, it's disappointing because we had so much, you know, tremendous enthusiasm and a tremendous, flood of interest here in Alberta. It's a great way to diversify our our energy mix, a great way to diversify our economy, bring in foreign investment, economic diversification for rural Alberta, you know, jobs in the clean tech sector that, you know, younger people are, yeah, seem to be more and more interested in participating in. And, it would be you know, I just wish that we would consistently try to encourage this activity as opposed to take moves that seem to discourage it.
Markham:Well and there's, we're we're talking about in a way that almost suggests that we have lots of time to figure this out. You know, if there's a it's ebbing now. It'll flow somewhere down the future in the future. You know? So with as we hear at Energy Media argue all the time, the global energy transition is this is rapid acceleration.
Markham:I mean, we've spent a lot of time in the last 6 months, doing interviews about China. And China installs half of the, the globe's solar generation every year. Half of that is rooftop solar, which was a great surprise to me. I didn't realize that. And they are going through the same kind of growing pains in China that Alberta is, because their grid I mean, there are gonna be 255 giant solar farms that are gonna be built in the Mongolian desert.
Markham:How is your grid gonna accommodate that? How is your distribution system going to accommodate that? Those are big questions, and it's not like the Chinese government does everything. It it it delegates, you know, some of that authority down to the provincial governments, which then delegates to the local governments. It's a complex mess.
Markham:Everybody's, but it's really important that jurisdictions get it right. They have to go. They have to grapple. They have to learn from other jurisdictions, the mistakes that were made in California, the mistakes that were made in Texas that led, you know, to outages, and and, you know, it was big it was a big problem. And Alberta just seems to be erecting a fence around itself.
Markham:Says, no. No. No. No. We're we're gonna opt out of the energy transition, and that is just not possible.
Markham:And there's a very good chance that that Alberta is going to arrive in 2030 without enough clean, abundant, low cost electricity, the kind that, you know, gets produced by your projects, and that worries me a lot. Because Alberta, you know, it's it it may not be the engine of the Canadian economy, but it sure is a big piston in that engine. And it's important that Alberta get this right, and it's not getting it right. So I don't know. I mean, that's a a bit of a rant, but this really concerns me, Dan.
Markham:This is this is a strategic error on the part of the government that isn't gonna bite to today, not gonna bite tomorrow, but in the not too distant future, it could bite hard.
Dan:I, I agree. I think in general, you know, taking extreme, view on energy one way or another, is is not helpful. If we if we go too fast, we will, won't be able to afford the transition. And if we go too slow, we'll be uncompetitive, and, you know, ultimately, we won't have a very hospitable world in the future. So, you know, the answer is in the middle.
Dan:And it re it really requires leadership to have an open mind on this thing, try to, go in and reach a conclusion based on, you know, the views of various experts as opposed to trying to reach trying to start something with the the conclusion already prebaked. Yeah. And I I I I'm, I'm generally concerned about this, lack of kind of pragmatic thinking on a variety of issues, that we're dealing with. All you know, variety of major global issues that we're dealing with at the moment. Energy is one of them.
Dan:Energy is, you know, probably the most significant one here in Alberta. So, it's our focus. We need more pragmatic thinking from a variety of of people, particularly our our leadership going forward.
Markham:I would like to see thought leaders, never mind political leaders, I would like to see thought leaders open up have a look at the data. The this is a problem for me, Dan. I spend a lot of time in global data. The International Energy Agency, Bloomberg, NEF, Rocky Mountain Institute, on and on and on. There's there's all kinds of data out there about the trends that are affecting the the energy trend the the energy system and how it's and how it's changing.
Markham:And that there I don't know that I've I I I hate to disagree with you, but I think the time for the middle ground is has passed. I think you could have done this 4 or 5 years ago. I think there was a middle ground available, but things are accelerating so quickly that I mean, let me give you an example. So now we're talking about the equal demand from 2028 to 20:30 because of the rapid electrification of transportation in markets like China and and other places, as in in Europe, for example. And that then is gonna lead to declining demand for oil, and that then is going to affect the Alberta oil industry, which then is going to affect the amount of revenue that's available to the government to invest in things like the power grid, on and on.
Markham:And suddenly, you find yourself on the slippery slope going down, and and then it's too late. The window was begun is closed, and and now all all you have left is is frantic, solutions that cost a lot more than if you had invest in done the right thing in, you know, years, previous. And that's why but but I'm not I I'm not here to beat you up for for for choosing the middle ground. It's such a Canadian thing. I really appreciate that.
Markham:Trust me.
Dan:No. No. I it's it's not a Canadian thing. Look. I started a renewable energy company in the heart of oil country 17 years ago, with, you know, with my own money competing against multibillion dollar companies.
Dan:I'm not shrinking violet here. I'm, I'm happy to speak my mind. I passionately believe that the middle ground is where the solutions lie. I don't think, we serve ourselves by by taking on the fight, by defining ourselves with a fight between 2 2, extreme choices. And, there's not enough people that are passionate about let's find the actual solution that works, which is a combination of a little bit from the left, a little bit from the right, and we're gonna find the doesn't get people excited.
Dan:I wish it did. I've always been excited about solutions to problems, not trying to find, more problems to to get in the way of solutions. And I think we really need that type of mindset.
Markham:Well, fair enough. And you and I could could go on. I think we're actually violently agreeing at the end of the day. We probably are. But this is the kind of conversation that needs to take place, frankly.
Markham:And and we'll have to have it over a beer next time I'm in Calgary because we don't we don't wanna keep our our our listeners, you know, too long listening to us have this head to head. So but, Dan, I think what we've done in this interview is, we've explored a lot of the problem that is that has emerged in Alberta around renewable energy development, problems with the power system, and so on. And I and we'll see if if over the next few years we come up with some solutions, but I appreciate the fact that you put your money where your mouth was, and you did it 17 years ago. You're still doing it today. Good luck, man.
Markham:We need, Alberta needs, Canada needs, Green Gate Power to be successful.
Dan:And I I I appreciate it. It's, you know, it's a really fun industry to be in, but it's not, for the faint of heart. That's for sure.
Markham:Well, thank you very much for for coming on today.
Dan:Thank you for having me.