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Our podcast features special guests and leaders discussing the many projects, partnerships, and innovations driving hydrogen adoption — starting in the Edmonton Metro Region, and expanding outward to Alberta, Canada, and the World.
Edmonton Region Hydrogen HUB is a collaborative initiative dedicated to advancing a thriving hydrogen economy in the Edmonton Region and beyond. Bringing together municipalities, industry, and associations, the HUB focuses on building a robust hydrogen value chain through collaboration, system integration, and policy advocacy. Leveraging the region’s world-class hydrogen production facilities and strategic infrastructure, the HUB drives innovation, promotes decarbonization, and stimulates economic growth, positioning the Edmonton region as a global leader in sustainable hydrogen development.
Welcome to the Hydrogen 2.0 podcast where Alberta's energy story evolves. Join us as we explore what's changed, what's working, and what's next from Edmonton to beyond. Here's your host, Kessia Kopecky.
Kessia:Welcome back to Hydrogen 2.0 . This latest episode, we're talking about pipelines and that expertise in the Edmonton region. And this is also a really special episode because we're actually on location at the twenty twenty six Canadian Hydrogen Convention happening in Edmonton. Today, I'm with Dan and Larry, and I think we should just get right into it. So, Larry, I'd like to start with you.
Kessia:If you can just tell us, especially for those people that might not know who you are. I know you're you're fairly well known in the Edmonton region ecosystem, but maybe there's some unusual suspects kinda tuning in here. Who are you and and what are you working on?
Larry:Oh, fantastic. Thanks. Great to be here. My name is Larry Young. I'm the CEO and founder of a company called Total Containment.
Larry:We build containment systems and reinforcement systems for pipelines to make them safer and hydrogen certainly falls under that purview. And, containment systems, there's a missing there's a missing link between environment, public safety, and pipelines. And it's in that area that we find, technological developments have been lacking. So that's where our company, is focused on. We build containment systems so that if pipelines do rupture or leak, there is no impact on the environment.
Larry:There's no impact on people who live near pipelines. And we had a a lot of protection to pipelines from, you know, from the protection from the environment, protection from corrosion, third party. You know, don't always call ahead when they dig for digging trenches or fence posts, things along that line. That's that's one of the major issues when it comes to pipelines is the risk of damage from third parties.
Kessia:Okay. So a lot of that safety and I guess mitigating safety risks as well?
Larry:Yeah, actually. The entirety of the system is designed around safety, both public safety and infrastructure safety. In Canada, it's been very difficult to get pipelines built. So in order to, optimize, I guess, is a good word, we're leaving a lot of flow in the pipes. Pipelines are derated for different reasons.
Larry:They move through a class location, say, or they have integrity issues. And in those areas or in those segments of pipe, flow is reduced substantially because of the stress on the pipe, well we can go in and install a variety of technologies that can get that pipeline back up to its natural pressure and increase flow. So there's a lot of flow being left on the table in a lot of pipelines in Canada. And if we can't build them, then let's optimize them.
Kessia:Speaking of optimization, Dan, can you tell me who you are? Tell our audience who you are and what you're working on.
Daniel:Thanks, Kessia. So my name is Daniel Fujinaga. I'm the department manager of the pipeline integrity and risk management group at CFER. So our group focuses more heavily on quantitative risk assessment, and and you mentioned optimization. So quantitative risk assessment helps people optimize their operations while making sure that their pipelines are, operating at an acceptably safe level.
Daniel:But, CFER as a whole, looks to, improve performance, both on the safety and efficiency front in the energy industry. And so we do that through analytical groups like the Pipeline Integrity Group, but that's also, through the use of our, testing equipment that we have in our facility and that's run by three separate testing groups. And so, that that's what I did before I was involved with this group. A lot more testing on the hydrogen front, proving out technologies, making sure that they can, be well understood before they go towards implementation in the field.
Kessia:So how do you two know each other?
Larry:Well, it's down that very lane actually. It's, you know, we've gone to sea for, and, you know, we've received a few grants from Alberta Innovates, and, naturally, Seafer's one of the how do I put this? Seafer's a place you go to if you wanna learn if your technology is up to snuff. And I'll I'll make it as plain as that. They don't fool around.
Larry:They have the equipment to test properly, and to full rupture if needed. And when you're building a containment system or trying to reinforce pipelines that are gonna be running near people's homes, You know, I've spent the last ten years getting this technology. This seems like a long time, but it's really not when you consider all the parameters that have to be tested. And we're a small company and, you know, raising funds and all that stuff. So the grants from Alberta Innovates, have helped substantially.
Larry:And there's just a natural relationship with CFER. We we mesh very well with them. They understand what we're trying to do, and, you know, they don't guide us. But when there's a problem, they don't hesitate to bring it to our attention, especially in our designs. So for us, it's it's when we're a new company, a fledgling company, and we say ten years, yeah, we're still a fledgling fledgling company.
Larry:But I'm hoping that, all the work that we've done in the last ten years will finally get out there this year and we'll be demonstrating the technology and trialing it along with CFER later this summer. And CFER has just been an integral part of that process.
Kessia:Awesome. So I guess this leads me to, I guess, our next question. You know, are at the Canadian Hydrogen Convention talking about hydrogen on a hydrogen podcast. So what's the stake here for pipelines and the value for pipelines with the hydrogen economy? How important is it?
Larry:Well, hydrogen doesn't scale without pipelines, and I'll leave it at that. That's you can't move this enough material through trucks, trains, or however you plan to move it, without pipelines. So if it can't be act made economic, it's just not gonna take off. Lots of smaller, storage vessels for, you know, fantastic diesel trucks over there sorry, hydrogen slash look like diesel trucks, but they're they're powered by hydrogen. It's that kind of thinking that's gonna move this.
Larry:But, again, if we can't move hydrogen at scale, then we're simply not gonna build an economy around it.
Kessia:Dan?
Daniel:I think further to that as well, it's not just scaling, but for legitimate feasibility. A lot of my focus has been on the the residential heating and, and those consumers. And so, the idea would be to displace the natural gas that's currently going to homes, with some hydrogen. So people are doing blends. Some people are looking towards getting towards pure hydrogen eventually.
Daniel:Those connections to the homes are through pipelines. All that infrastructure exists already. It's not likely that we're going to transition to a system in which a truck drops off your your shipment of hydrogen for the week every every single week. So using that infrastructure is is kind critical to good adoption of solutions like that. And and really being able to affect all of those individual consumers would have a significant impact on reducing the carbon footprint.
Daniel:And so, yeah, we can make small pilots work by shipping skids places and and like Larry said, truckloads, train loads, whatever it may be to other places, but this only really makes sense with pipelines. But there are a lot of questions that come with, you know, is it possible to install new pipelines? Is that even economically feasible? So people start turning towards legacy infrastructure and just understanding how that infrastructure is going to interact with hydrogen as it, you know, potentially degrades the material properties of those steel pipelines. Is that degradation of properties to an extreme enough extent that the the risk of that pipeline now becomes unacceptable and we're doing something unsafe.
Daniel:So that was kind of CFER's involvement on that front both on the analytical side to estimate the risk that would come with that, but also to help understand the material properties through through testing. And so that's that's been my focus. And Larry's technology has some some benefits that could be used to to make those pipelines operate safely.
Kessia:So when we're looking at, you know, Alberta's pipeline expertise and our infrastructure, is what parts of that expertise and infrastructure and or as well, translates directly to the hydrogen opportunity?
Daniel:So for us, on on the quantitative risk side, that that expertise is it it serves as the foundation for us to build upon because we're not fundamentally changing how we look at this problem when we introduce hydrogen. All we're looking at is what change hydrogen introduces and if we can correctly capture that change, it folds right into our existing processes. So it's not it's not this big reach, it's not a big jump, we just need a bit more information to build on the expertise that has already been established.
Larry:Larry? Yeah. I I couldn't agree more. I mean, Alberta is the home of pipelines in Canada. You know, there's a lot of there's a lot of fantastic technologies out there but you know, the it's things like route selection, construction methods, welding practices, all these types of things and because hydrogen isn't just another gas.
Larry:The fundamentals carry over but the material doesn't always behave the same and that's so for us we're trying different coatings to apply this to carbon steel to see if we can block permeation. The hydrogen permeation is the risk, make no mistake. So we've been working with Daniel and his group to test our our coating. It's a ceramic based coating that we can apply on the inside of pipes and test to see if, you know, if there's if we actually block the permeation of the hydrogen. And so far the results have been have been really surprising and good, but it's it's early stages and, you know, we can certainly apply this to a small, you know, small line of of, you know, a couple of maybe a 100 meters.
Larry:But if we're gonna move hydrogen at scale, 100 meters isn't gonna cut it. So there's a lot more. It's it's very new. And there's some serious risks that, know, we can make we like we discussed before that you can make all the colors of the rainbow of hydrogen, but if you can't move it safely, everyone's gotta go to you. Mean, you just you can't.
Larry:It just doesn't make sense on an economic scale.
Kessia:I like that you kinda talked about, you know, a couple 100 miles or kilometers because that was I was thinking about asking. So when I started into this hydrogen space about four years ago, I often heard that, you know, to deliver hydrogen, it would have to be produced more or less within 200 kilometers of wherever it's produced to delivery, right, to end use. With pipelines and with innovating technology around pipelines, what's the possibility of expanding that? How far? And, what would it take to do that?
Kessia:Money. Money.
Larry:It's always money. It always comes down to money. There's really no way around it. I mean, you see, you know, a few years ago, hydrogen was much more exciting. There's a lot of people.
Larry:And, you know, I'm gonna get real. This isn't this isn't for the light, for the lighthearted, and it's it's it's a dangerous road we're on. But we've also, you know, we've undertaken, you know, moving natural gas has its risks as well, and we're very good at that. Mhmm. So I think, you know, we'll get there, but it's difficult because, you know, five years ago, hydrogen was so new.
Larry:Everyone was excited and their people were throwing money at it. And we've kind of weeded out a lot of a lot of that and now we're living in the real world and you know anyone who's going to invest into hydrogen and I'll go back to the colors again. I mean, get all kinds of different ways to generate hydrogen, but still no way no reliable way to move it at scale, for the economic side. And if the economics don't work, it doesn't matter what the end result is. It doesn't matter what you hope to see.
Larry:But if the economics don't work, it's never gonna get enough interest and investment. And it's investment that that moves the dial on on all things, especially in hydrogen.
Daniel:I I think on the distance side of things, as as long as we can, you know, validate or or look into, what the risk of transporting hydrogen would be in pipelines, functionally, should have the same kind of effective radius as natural gas currently does. So getting it from a production facility through transmission lines into cities and then being distributed to to homes on that front. It's just, that we need to be responsible in in making that decision. You know, it's it's theoretically possible to move it through those lines. We just need to prove out that it's safe to do so.
Daniel:And so that that's kind of one of the next steps for this industry is is really having a good hard look at at the safety implications. And to do that, we need to better understand, how how it's gonna interact with materials. And and there's a lot of work going on still for, how hydrogen interacts with a variety of vintage materials with a variety of flaws in them. The problem is that through the course of time, we've we've used so many different grades of steel. It's all got different ages.
Daniel:It's corroding differently. It's it's interacting differently within with this environment. And so we need to look at all of those different variables to see if there's something that we, might not be considering at the start that could have very serious interactions with that molecule and and potentially lead to premature failure and and therefore kind of an unsafe situation. But but Larry mentioned danger and I'm I'm happy that he did. I I feel like there's this attitude when we're looking at transitioning to hydrogen or blending hydrogen or whatever that, like, natural gas is this totally benign substance, and that it it serves as our baseline of, like, zero risk.
Daniel:It couldn't hurt a fly, but the the reason we use these substances to heat our homes is because they contain energy. When when we burn them, that energy turns to heat and that we need that. Right? And energy is also what hurts people. That's just how it is.
Daniel:So, you know, there there were there still are risks with natural gas, and there are always going to be risks with transporting energy. But the the necessity of what that energy provides, makes those risks tolerable. Like we're not just moving it for fun, we're moving it because Yeah. If we didn't heat our homes, the consequences would be worse.
Larry:We live in Alberta.
Kessia:It's almost it's almost like a perception thing. Right? Like, I'm sure when natural gas first many, many generations ago came into our homes, there were probably lots of safety concerns or or perceptions about that that have been since addressed. Right?
Larry:So there still are. Yeah. I've you know, just last year, and I'll use this as a quick example. Last year, I'm sitting at my deck, firing up the barbecue, and I smell I smell gas. So, you know, I call ATCO right away, and ATCO spent the next fourteen hours digging a hole in my backyard to fix a leaking pipe.
Larry:You know, had my kids been out there or, you know, had a had a gathering or something. I mean, that under no circumstances do we just assume that because something is plumbed up and in your house, is it safe? There's constant oversight. There's constant maintenance. There's all these things have to come in.
Larry:This isn't a one and done thing. You don't build a pipeline and then, okay, that's good for a hundred years. No. That's not the way things work. The risk is still there regardless of what we know.
Larry:There's all kinds of anomalies that come you know, the blends, especially with the blends. I mean, who knows what those, you know, what who knows because we haven't done it. So we have to go through every every possible scenario, of something that could happen Yeah. Before we get to to a place where we can say this is safe.
Kessia:Alright, Dan, Larry, thank you so much. We're actually gonna turn this into two episodes because I know that this conversation is gonna go a lot longer. We could not really talk about this all day. So thank you so much. Everybody can tune in to the next episode where we're gonna have the rest of this discussion.
Kessia:That's it for today's episode of Hydrogen 2.0 . If you are looking to learn more about the Edmonton region's hydrogen economy, learn more about the Edmonton Region Hydrogen Hub, or get in touch with us, you can visit hydrogen.ca or send us an email at hello@hydrogen.ca. Also, feel free to follow us on LinkedIn, the Edmonton Region hydrogen hub, to stay up to date on all the news and all the activities happening in our hydrogen economy.