Oil sands workers reject green energy jobs

Markham interviews Parker Muzzerall, a PhD candidate in the Department of Sociology at the University of British Columbia. "Oilsands workers are resistant to sustainable jobs, new research finds."

What is Energi Talks?

Journalist Markham Hislop interviews leading energy experts from around the world about the energy transition and climate change.

Markham: 00:04

Welcome to episode 363 of the Energy Talks podcast. I'm energy journalist, Markham Hislop. I recently came across a very interesting online article titled Oil Sands Workers Are Resistant TO Sustainable Jobs, New Research Fines, and it was in the, the conversation. At first glance, this is hardly surprising. Oil and gas workers like their above average wages and are loath to give them up.

Markham: 00:33

But what struck me the most about their attitudes, is they think is that they think they have a choice. That the energy transition is optional, rather than a market driven technology revolution that will soon be displacing fossil fuels with clean electricity and electric devices like EVs and heat pumps. I'm going to be talking to the article's author, Parker Muzzarroll, who is a PhD candidate in the department of sociology at the University of British Columbia. So welcome to Energy Talks, Parker.

Parker: 01:05

Happy to be here.

Markham: 01:07

Well, this is what we're gonna be talking about today is something that I've been running into for years years in discussing the oil sands or the oil and gas in general with Albertans. And they seem to think literally that the energy transition for Alberta is optional. It's like this Alberta exceptionalism, right? You see it in Texas all the time. When I was in the US, they used to talk about Texas exceptionalism.

Markham: 01:32

Well, we're different, we're almost like a different country, The rules don't apply to us or they apply in ways that we will decide on that. And and Alberta kinda has some of that exceptionalism, and it it shows here in p in oil sands workers' approach to, to this topic. Let's start off our conversation. I'll ask you just to give me a, an overview of your research, if you don't mind. Sure.

Parker: 02:02

So this project started in 2021, and around that time, the Canadian federal government, kind of on the heels of the pan Canadian framework on clean growth and climate change and the healthy economy and a healthy environment report. We're starting to really take seriously the idea of putting in federal policies aimed at supporting oil and gas workers through the coming transition to a net zero economy. And what I sort of found absent in a lot of the conversations around this was what oil and gas workers actually thought about this idea. And so I, went to Fort McMurray, interviewed, about 18 oil and gas workers there across a range of, different positions in the industry from process operators sort of on the front lines of it to, nurses on-site and, sales managers, sort of the whole gamut. And, with really the question in mind, how are these workers, thinking about understanding and interpreting this proposal for, of a justice oriented, policy framework?

Parker: 03:09

And more broadly, how are they thinking about the process of decarbonization, the energy transition, and, the move away from from their industry? And so through those conversations, I learned a lot. I spoke with a lot of really good, decent, hardworking people who care not only about the livelihood that they have and about the career that they've built for themselves in this industry, but about the community that they live in and, the people that they work with. And so I think perhaps the most top level takeaway for me was that for these folks, the energy transition isn't just technological or economic process, but it's also, represents a social and cultural threat as well, in a place like Fort McMurray where the community and the industry are so inextricably binded. Let's, binded?

Markham: 04:05

Let's, let's unpack that, and I wanna start at the since kind of the global level. In Alberta, and this is true of other oil and gas jurisdictions, it's not just, Alberta, but that is the epicenter of the Canadian oil and gas industry. And as I'm fond of saying, Canada all by itself is the 4th largest oil producer in the world, 5th largest gas producer. What happens in Alberta, which is the epicenter of the Canadian industry, matters. And one of the things that I think has become apparent is that Alberta as a whole, and I'm talking about the politicians, the the, oil companies, the their leadership, you know, key professions like engineering and geoscience and so on, have bought into the OPEC narrative that this is not going to be a displacement of fossil fuels by clean electricity, or high you know, clean fuels.

Markham: 05:06

It's going to be a diversification. It'll be just like what happened between World War 2 and up to not that long ago where new sources of energy like hydroelectric or nuclear were, added to a growing demand for energy. And so hydrocarbons kept you know, the demand kept growing for decades decades decades, and all of that new electricity and that new energy was added to the mix. And OPEC's modeling now shows that they expect by 2050 that the, demand for oil, for example, will grow from 103,000,000 barrels a day to 120,000,000 barrels a day by mid mid century. And all and they don't deny that there's going to be, wind and solar in particular, but also nuclear and hydro are going to add to the the global primary energy.

Markham: 06:01

They don't deny that. They just say that the the the global the total demand will grow so much that that there still will be growing demand for oil and gas. That's the way the folks at Alberta think about it. So when the federal government comes in with a Just Transition Act, which is what that legislation was originally called, they see it as being very similar to the coal industry in Alberta, where the coal industry was deliberately shut down to in order to reduce emissions in the in the power sector. And communities like Hannah went through a very deliberate process of negotiating with the government, and there were other groups involved and coming up with a, with a settlement for the workers to help them transition out of coal.

Markham: 06:51

And I'm I would imagine that the folks in Fort McMurray, you know, if you're any one of those, employment, groups that you talked about, they're looking at that and thinking that what we mean by energy transition is what happened to the folks in the coal industry. Is that a fair take on on this whole issue?

Parker: 07:12

Yeah. I think, a lot of what you said there was certainly mirrored in, the responses I was getting from my participants. And so, could sort of just say 3 things to that. First of all, I think you're you're exactly right in talking about this difference between an energy transition versus an energy addition. So the sociologist Richard York has done work on this and a historical perspective to show that most times, through a history where a major new energy source has emerged, it has it has only emerged in a way to expand total energy, kind of at a at a per unit basis, rather than actually transition at a one to one.

Parker: 07:50

So historically, we have a we have a tendency to to engage in energy additions rather than transitions, and the key difference now is that the the transition or the shift from, fossil fuel based energies to renewable based energies is a lot more deliberately structured than previous energy transitions, which emerged a bit more organically through technological innovation. And, secondly, it's different in that in order to kind of meet the end goal of why we're doing this, which is to keep, you know, these parameters set out in the Paris agreement to keep warming below 2 degrees, that requires a transition, not an addition. If we simply diversify the grid and expand it to overall global grids capacity by adding new forms of renewable low carbon energy, we're not actually doing much in the way of getting the carbon, reducing the amount of carbon we're we're emitting on a per year basis. So you're totally right in that in highlighting that distinction between the transition versus an addition, and that that sort of sentiment is pervasive in, I mean, I would say in Alberta, but also I think in Canada and in large in the conversation around reaching net zero as a target.

Parker: 09:03

Right? Is there some there's some sort of nod to the idea there that we can continue to emit a certain amount as long as we diversify enough and come up with alternative technologies to mitigate against those emissions? Secondly, I would say that my participants all really talked about the sort of, like a general skepticism around the ability for renewable energy to ever meet global demand, and this idea that it's really just an unfeasible sort of pipe dream project. And that even if we were able to scale technologies like wind, solar, and hydro to a level that could sort of meet current grid needs, there would always be alternative uses for fossil fuels, even in non combustive settings. So they frequently pointed to things like the use of plastics, the use of fossil fuels in clothing, and, numerous other synthetic materials, as a way in which we would continue to rely on and use, fossil fuels as a commodity resource even if we're not using it even if the primary use is not combustion for things like heating and transportation.

Parker: 10:12

And then 3rd to your connection to the coal thing, again, yes. Many participants kind of when I so about half of my participants before the study had heard of this idea of a just transition proposal, which was very much in the news at the time, and about a half hadn't. And the half who had heard about it, all drew connections to the coal experience. And so just to add to that context, the in after the Paris agreement, Canada set out to deliberately phase out the national coal sector, in which they've been largely successful at. There's only a handful of remaining coal plants left in the country, most of which are located in Cape Breton, which has a long, legacy of coal production.

Parker: 10:56

And, in particular, the Alberta coal industry, was phased out quite quickly. And so there was a just transition plan in place, but, policy analysts, like Hadrian Mertens, Aquit at the CCPA has pointed out the ways in which that just transition policy for the coal sector kind of failed to really integrate community level needs and perspectives and address a lot of those concerns. And so my participants who know people who've lived and worked in coal communities are sort of drawing on firsthand anecdotal evidence from friends and family members who said, yeah, the dress transition for us, like, there is nothing just about that. And so when you have this combination of, the idea that the grid will only grow, as one participant put it, the pie is only gonna get bigger, and the idea that there'll always be continued uses or an alternative uses for fossil fuels as a commodity resource even if we scale renewables. And then matched with kind of firsthand anecdotal evidence of the ways in which the just transition for the, coal sector maybe didn't really benefit communities in a way that the federal government had intended it to, kind of creates this perfect storm for these people to have, this sort of resistant, skeptical, and fearful, read of this of this proposal for their industry as a structured phase out rather than a kinda labor support policy.

Markham: 12:21

Yeah. So I I would agree with that a 100%. That is very accurately describes the attitudes of many of the people that I've talked to in the industry. And there's there are some misconceptions here, that, are beginning to like, I'm starting to see in the conversations I'm having with energy transition experts. So for example, this idea that the grid will never be able to expand to provide all of the primary energy we need, well, the whole idea of primary energy is coming under attack because the, for instance, the Rocky Mountain Institute makes a very good point, which is that fossil fuels are so inherently inefficient that the amount of energy on average that you would get from, all of them would be about 30% of all the energy contained in the fossil fuels.

Markham: 13:09

Whereas with, electricity, you get it's much well over 70%. So what that means is at the end of the day, the total amount of energy that you would require if fossil fuels were eventually taken out of the system is actually less because the devices you're using and the the electricity you're using are so much more efficient. And so but I bring this up for a reason, and that is that the conversation, around energy in Alberta never takes into account the theories and ideas and narratives of the of the future is electric approach, or the that scholarship. That the kind of work that we do at Energy Media is completely foreign to these to these folks. All they get from their bosses, from their community networks, from social media, particularly from the Alberta media, is the oil and gas forever narrative.

Markham: 14:13

The one that we've been talking about today. Additive, not dis displacing, that kind of thing. And so it's quite reasonable. I mean, that's the lens through which they view all of the information that comes into, you know, that they consume, about this. And, of course, they're skeptical.

Markham: 14:32

Why wouldn't they be skeptical? They nobody's explained. And why would why would they not think that, oh, we'll just transfer over, you know, if if oil demand for refineries goes down, we'll just make stuff out of it. Because that's what the premier of Alberta says. Danielle Smith says that all the time.

Markham: 14:50

And what nobody, ever point, well, I have, but she just ignores my questions during press conferences. I point out that if you wanna build an industry that takes bitumen, which is what they produce up in the oil sands, and you wanna make stuff with it, you're gonna take 10 to 20 years to actually build an that industry. You don't just flick a switch, and and tomorrow you're producing, you know, feedstock for materials manufacturing instead of refineries. That's a long drawn out process, and nobody explains it in that context. And so I understand completely that people on the front lines of the industry are not exposed to the other side of the argument.

Markham: 15:33

And so why wouldn't they feel that way?

Parker: 15:35

Mhmm. Yeah. I think you're I think you're right on there. And I think what you're getting at is this sort of relationship in between the way that, like, structural forces and elite actors, whether that be media institutions or politicians or industry operatives, can kind of put narratives out there, and then the way that they get filtered down into the sort of level of culture, and then become enduring and reproducing at that level as well. And so there's a rich, history of literature in the social sciences on on on climate change and and the fossil fuel industry that have really robustly documented the systematic ways in which the oil and gas the fossil fuel industry more broadly, and the governments within Petro states, you know, deliberately work to slow down, block, and deny, sort of, the realities of of of this transition.

Parker: 16:25

And so a lot of sort of the realities of of of this transition. And so a lot of that work started on climate change, and now it's started to shift more to look at, like, these structural barriers to decarbonization, which, you know, hinge on misinformation campaigns, deliberate narrative construction, and these sorts of things. And so that, for sure, is happening at one level in in Alberta, where you have political leaders routinely sort of denying, that this transition is happening, that it poses, like, a real threat to the industry, that no matter what, the oil and gas industry will march on and will continue to be viable, will continue to fulfill a need. And then at the same time, though, that kind of filters down to the cultural level in in that in community level, where these sorts of narratives get woven into people's self conception and how they situate themselves within the world. And so these narratives get shared in break rooms, and they get shared on the golf course, and they get shared in the curling rink, and they get shared at bars and restaurants, and they kind of become this, woven into this implicit understanding of how people in these communities situate themselves both, like, within their region, within their country, and within a global economy in which they feel that they're providing a really vital and necessary resource, which we need to be clear to say they have they have been for a very long time.

Parker: 17:55

The world has been entirely reliant on fossil fuels for a very long time, and the work that they do has directly contributed to that. And so when those sorts of narratives get woven into their sense of stability and security in their way of life, any sort of external exogenous threat to that can is interpreted not just as a political or economic issue, but as, like, an identity issue. And I think that's where these things get really sticky is that when you're talking about when political sort of structural economic shifts are interpreted and felt at the level of individual and cultural identity, becomes that becomes a really tough force of resistance.

Markham: 18:38

I would have to agree with that. I mean, there's lots of, data, doctor Jared Wesley at the University of Alberta, doctor Melanie Thomas at the University of Calgary, Janet Brown, the pollster based out of Calgary, all have extensive data going back years that proves that the majority of of Albertans, are so enmeshed in the oil and gas culture that an attack on oil and gas is an attack on their personal identity, and it makes it very difficult. But there's I wanna talk about something that we're currently having a discussion inside the energy media community. We, in a couple of weeks, we will be launching our 1st online training course. It's designed for professionals, you know, may it'd be engineers or accountants or lawyers or whoever that have to do professional development or just people who wanna understand the energy transition.

Markham: 19:30

It's called how the energy transition really works. And it's based on not OPEC's oil and gas forever narrative. It's based on the technology adoption theory and and work that's been done by people like professor Dorian Farmer at Oxford and, you know, Kingsmill Bond at Rocky Mountain Institute. And so it's a very different look, and essentially it is not climate based. Climate change, you know if you look at the S curves for all of the clean energy technologies, wind, solar, EVs, the government in policy, climate policy was very important, at the bottom of that s curve when it starts at the left and it works its way up to the inflection point, but now all of those technologies are past their inflection point and they're cost competitive with the fossil fuel technologies.

Markham: 20:30

So now it's become, it either is or very soon will be depending on the region, a market driven, cost driven, benefit driven transition, not a climate transition. And my question for you is that I'm assuming that the folks up in Fort McMurray working in the oil sands don't really think of it that way. And when you mentioned climate change, their ears shut off. Mhmm. Right away that it becomes like a more I heard somebody describe it as a moral argument, and then then the folks can say, well, you know, I don't believe in that.

Markham: 21:09

I don't think that's the way it's going to, you know, pan out. I think that's, you know, whatever. It's just, you know, climate change is naturally occurring. We've had, you know, all the arguments. What is does that accurately describe the way people think, you know, the people that you talk to?

Parker: 21:27

Yeah. I think that's definitely a part of it. Certainly, you know, the the energy transition as you talk about in the first part of, like, that temporal piece, is largely married with the idea of climate change as a response to climate change. But as you say, technology has advanced, becoming cost competitive, and there's a real potential now that market mechanisms gonna drive that transition as much as sort of normative claims about climate action will. But certainly I would say for my participants, they still largely see the energy transition as a direct and deliberate response to climate change and climate action, rather than any type of, like, naturally occurring market transition.

Parker: 22:12

And in fact, many participants said that if the market naturally transitions, I'm okay with that. I just don't want the government pushing this on us. I just don't want external forces shutting down our industry prematurely when there's still so much resource resource in the ground, when there's still so much work that we could do here. And so I think that that tension really comes out where most, I mean, most of these participants are conservative. Fort McMurray votes at about 80% conservative, the riding of Fort McMurray would Buffalo, and that's pretty stable over the last few federal elections.

Parker: 22:47

And so within a conservative worldview, you have a general disposition towards free market economics and allowing market structures to sort of dictate, how how, like, broader, processes play out. And so that's very much true. Most none of my participants expressed the claim that, like, even if the market pushes us towards green energy, that's bad. Like, that sort of level of rigid attachment to fossil fuels, I didn't really see. In fact, and many participants would say, if we get there by the market, that's fine.

Parker: 23:17

What we don't want is environmentalists, liberals, and the federal government coming in and shutting us down prematurely in the name of this, like, under the under the banner of a normative argument around climate change or a moral argument. It's, like, this is a moral responsibility to phase this out, fossil fuels are in some way morally bad, that's where the that's another real, like, angle of strong resistance. It's against that type of argument. And so I think there's a lot of potential in actually decoupling the energy transition in some ways, at least the material function of the energy transition, decoupling it from some of the more normative, moral arguments around climate change, because I think that attachment, poses a barrier in and of itself.

Markham: 24:01

You have just made the argument for our training course.

Parker: 24:04

Okay.

Markham: 24:05

That that's exactly what our training course does. I don't know that I've, you know, I narrated the video, and then we have a number of clips from from, probably 12 or 13 experts. But in the course of my narration, I don't recall mentioning climate once, maybe maybe one time for exactly that reason is as as long as it's economics, the market is driving it, costs are driving it. These are all forces that we understand. As soon as it becomes a normative argument, a moral argument, then that changes the whole tone of the conversation.

Markham: 24:41

And in Alberta, it's deadly. Your argument gets lost right away. Nobody wants to talk to you. And I think the, the emphasis that your respondents put on market forces is certainly widespread in Alberta. I hear that all the time when I'm out there, you know, amongst family, my friends, and my networks, and particularly amongst those who are working in or around the industry.

Markham: 25:07

And the and this gets back to my point that I made earlier is they're never exposed to the argument, it's like they're 5 or 10 years behind where this debate is globally. You know, these are the kinds of things that were said in the 2010s or the aughts, you know, and we've other jurisdictions, like when I talk to to American experts, for example, or European experts, they have a completely different view of it, completely different view of the future. It's it's already they have that market driven view, or in the case of the Americans, it's a national security driven view where we can't be relied upon China for things like sources of energy, our our transportation, our weapons. We have to make those at home because China is is our big geopolitical rival. And so all of that none of that gets discussed in in Alberta.

Markham: 26:04

It's a very, very narrow kind of monocultural sort of approach to this, and but it sounds like if there is a niche to kinda get your fingers under that conversation and and change it, it would be around the idea that the market is now driving the transition. Is that a fair thing to say?

Parker: 26:28

Yeah. I think I think it's part of it for sure. I think as climate communicators and people advocating for climate action, we that frame of talking about, you know, impending disaster, the moral necessity to respond to climate change as an existential threat, that only plays to certain segments of the population. And as we've seen sort of time and time again, which Alberta I think is part and parcel of other segments of the population, it's a it's a direct opposition to that argument. And that I mean, that that's true of of a new of numerous issues, in which, you know, people with different moral dispositions, different values, are going to interpret and orient themselves to moral arguments differently.

Parker: 27:13

And so I think I think, yeah, that is definitely part of it is coming up with an alternative language to talk about the energy transition that, you know, is not trying to, like, hide the medicine and the sugar, so to speak, but it's, we're we're being realistic about the fact that market structural market forces are starting to lead this transition, is one way. And another thing that I kinda point to in my piece is that I think we also need to really regionalize the discussion. And so when we talk about the energy transition as this sort of broad national level program, it, sort of clouds, a lot of the regional variation that patterns the Canadian energy economy and Canadian site society in general. I grew up in the Maritimes. I've lived in Toronto.

Parker: 28:02

I've spent significant time in Alberta, and I've been in BC now for 4 years, and so I feel like I have a decent handle on some of this regional variation. And people across Canada in different different, communities see their they see their relationship to the national structure very differently. They the issues that matter to them in different areas, are very different, and the regional, energy economies are very different. You know, energy production in Quebec or Ontario is very different than any energy production in Alberta or Newfoundland. And so it's one thing to set sort of national level policy targets through things like the sustainable jobs act, but I really think we need to get to a place where we're talking about a place based approach to the energy transition, where we're coming up with plans and pathways that are tailored to the specific needs of regions, rather than trying to do this at a really top down national level approach.

Parker: 28:59

And by doing that, I think that opens up the way to talk about, you know, maybe the or moral argument about climate action plays really well in the lower mainland of BC where, you know, that is a more pressing issue, in the in the minds of voters, in the minds of citizens. But in Alberta where the climate issue is is sort of like, you know, there's almost an allergy to talk about it, then I think coming up with, like, talking about regional development, talking about diversifying the economy, talking about creating pathways to future employment, Seth Klein talks about in his book. I think those that are alter when we get down to the regional level, we can get more specific, we can get more tailored, and we can start to really take culture into account in how we talk about the energy transition, rather than this like sort of very general, a national top down level approach.

Markham: 29:54

What I've heard from folks in the industry is, let's say I'm a welder or let's say I'm an electrician. I wanna weld stuff. I don't wanna get paid well for it. I wanna install, you know, electrical devices or whatever. I wanna work on electrical systems in buildings, what that's what I wanna do.

Markham: 30:17

Do I care that it's in the oil sands, or do I care that it's in conventional oil and gas, or do I care that it's in solar farms, or or maybe an advanced materials manufacturing? No. What what Albertans are hearing is we need to shut down the oil and gas industry in 10 years because of the climate imperative, and you're just gonna have to cope. And you know too bad, sucks to be you, but that's you know this is a global crisis we're burning up, and that's, and nobody ever talks about what the diversification opportunities are. Now here at Energy Media we've done a lot of that.

Markham: 31:00

So for example, the big one is Alberta Innovates, the provincial innovation agency is like a year away, from having a commercial process to turn bitumen into the precursor for carbon fiber, industrial carbon fiber. Could be automotive grade. It could be a lower grade that gets used in construction materials, whatever it happens to be, but they're that close. And then there are other uses for bitumen, you know, like asphalt binder to make roads. You can make hard carbon that goes into batteries and other and that's only 3.

Markham: 31:34

There are many more. They just haven't got around yet to to doing the the science and the research. So there is an argument to be made, ironically, you know, your you were told, hey. You know what? We'll use this bitumen for something else.

Markham: 31:51

The government says, we'll use this bitumen for something else, and nobody then takes it to the next step and says what is that something else? What's the plan? What's we have we have a strategy. Okay? What policies do we need?

Markham: 32:04

What private enterprise? What private capital needs to be attracted? How do we put together a hub so that we can do supply chains? And, I mean, you see this in hydrogen. You see it in other parts.

Markham: 32:15

You do the US is doing a hub and cluster, strata industrial cluster strategy is a big part of what the inflation reduction act is doing. And in Canada we have only scratched the surface. But bitumen and oil and gas in general in Alberta is a prime candidate for this approach. But as long as we're the the other side is climate change and climate crisis, then that short circuits the there's there's no conversation to be had in Alberta, and I suspect that that's what you heard in Fort McMurray.

Parker: 32:53

Yeah. Certainly. And I think the thing we need to remember, is that the folks working in this industry have a much more intimate knowledge about a lot of these things than the general public, and even a lot of, I would say social scientists who research these issues. If you're working in oil and gas industry every day and you're having professional conversations with people about alternative uses, your knowledge is, you know, much more, reflective of the reality of the industry, on some of these, like, material issues than than than outsiders who just simply can't know know the level that that the people actually involved in the industry know. And so I think for me, that was that was a really insightful thing to learn from my interviews is is all of these alternative uses, these alternative ways that that the industry could be diversified.

Parker: 33:42

And I think we we like, people on climate advocates really need to to take those arguments seriously, and I think often when the left approaches climate arguments from a moral position, they they're also similarly closed to those arguments in the way that the right is closed to moral arguments from from the other side. And so, I think, climate advocates, and, you know, which often are situated on the political left, could learn a lot from taking seriously conversations about diversification and conversations about alternative uses of these products, as an employment pathway, even if it's viewed as a temporary or a bridging technology in the way that we talk about, like natural gas, for example. And so well, not well, that's not a wholesale endorsement of that. We could we we need to think about decarbonization always as a in in temporal context. It's never in a switch it's never the flipping of a switch.

Markham: 34:45

See, and I would argue that we should never talk about decarbonization. Mhmm. Because decarbonization is an important concept linked to climate change. And so as soon as you talk about decarbonization, now you're talking about lowering emissions, and now you play right into the the arguments against federal climate policy, the oil and gas emissions cap, the clean fuel regulations, the clean fuel standards, the clean electricity regulations, all of that stuff that people in in Port McMurray hate with a passion. As soon as you say decarbonization, they make that connection, and then you've you've lost them.

Markham: 35:22

I prefer, and I think this is a much more, robust argument, is to say that if this is about economics, Now we're talking essentially clean energy technologies on the supply side, clean energy technologies on the demand side, are disrupting the oil and gas business model. When you have an innovative disruption, eventually, you start to bleed customers. Your demand goes to the better technology. And what even the best run most profitable companies will eventually fail when their markets are disrupted. That's the work of Clay Clay Christensen, the Harvard Business School professor, and it's a well known, you know, it's it's this is hardly this is not revolutionary by any stretch, but nobody, I think I haven't seen it applied much in the context of the energy transition.

Markham: 36:17

And in Alberta, nobody talks about it. Well, I talk about it, but nobody else talks about it. And I wanna bring up another point because you raised the issue of these the oil and gas or the, you know, the folks in in Fort McMurray have a lot of expertise. I'm having a big fight right now with the folks at the University of Alberta because their energy transition course is run by geoscientists, moderated, and it includes a lot of people who come out of the oil and gas industry. And I argue that they don't have they are not energy experts or they're energy transition experts.

Markham: 36:51

They are oil and gas experts, which is a now a very, they know their business. They don't know the competition's business. They're like Blockbuster. You know? When Netflix came along with streaming video, they could have bought Netflix for $50.50,000,000 and incorporated them into their business model, changed their business model.

Markham: 37:11

They chose not to because they didn't understand their competition. In the same way, oil and gas engineers or steam operators or whatever it might be if you're working in the oil and gas industry don't understand electric vehicles and heat pumps and wind turbine turbines and solar panels and batteries. That's it is nobody talks about it. They don't understand it at all. And so, I deliberately say that oil and gas, professionals and people with expertise are not energy transition.

Markham: 37:45

I deny their expertise on the energy transition. And you have to understand technology adoption theory. You have to understand the modeling. You have to understand the data and the evidence in order, to properly understand the global energy transition and its implications for Alberta. So I this is a a it's a a point of contention for me that I'm I'm having that kind of debate in Alberta all the time.

Markham: 38:13

But, anyway, I don't wanna belabor that point. So maybe, to wrap up our conversation, Parker, what kind of conclusions did you come to as a result of all of this, the research that you did in Fort McMurray?

Parker: 38:30

Yeah. So I think, your point about talking about the the economics of it maybe gets gets to what one of my main conclusions is in that. I think, yes, there's a benefit to shifting the conversation to center on the economics of the energy transition. I think that's useful. And I think that's a language that people both understand.

Parker: 38:54

And that can be, incentivizing when when there's a clear economic argument for for making a change. At the same time though, I think when we if we overemphasize economic arguments to the detriment of talking about the way that it affects communities and it affects cultural continuity and lifestyles and and and world views, then we're missing the plot a little bit because, you know, things like the Sustainable Jobs Act are designed to provide, you know, reskilling, retraining, economic compensation. They're they're essentially a labor centered economic policy proposal, and that's not appealing to people. Saying that you can make, you know, the same or a similar amount of money by moving away to build solar panels is not appealing to people if that doesn't is not part of, like, their cultural worldview or offers them a pathway to feel like they continue to exercise their way of life, be around their friends and family, be in the place where they want to live. The oil and gas industry has been an opportunity ladder for a lot of people in Canada, particularly people who grew up in economically marginalized regions, like rural maritimes where I grew up.

Parker: 40:12

I remember in junior high hearing advertisements on the news saying, don't come to Fort McMurray, if you don't already have a job and a place to live because it's so inundated with people from other regions flooding in to fill the labor gap. And the people who stayed and endured through booms cycles of boom and bust, you know, have made a lot of money. They've bought homes. They've raised families, and they've built communities in these places. And if we over rely on economic arguments to try to persuade people either out of these communities or out of these jobs, we risk overlooking the ways in which their identity and their culture and their way of life is intertwined with these things.

Parker: 40:51

And so by regionalizing the energy transition language, emphasizing the economic potential and benefits while also, paying dual attention and, and empathy toward the cultural concerns and the identity concerns. I think we'd need to really figure out how to, like, tether those two things together and and make it so people can both see themselves in a viable job and in a viable livelihood in the future, but also being able to still be around their friends and family and live a culturally meaningful life to them. And so tying those two things together is sort of, I think, the next step in how we talk about and implement energy transition policy.

Markham: 41:32

I couldn't agree more. I grew up in Northern Manitoba, just south of Churchill.

Parker: 41:37

Now,

Markham: 41:37

American and other listeners might want to go find a map, that's in Manitoba. It's about a 1000 kilometers north of of Winnipeg, but it's a very small isolated community serving Manitoba Hydro back this is back in the in the seventies. And when you live that far north and you're isolated, you do build community. And you do have a you feel more vulnerable, and you feel that your, you know, a downturn in the economy or some other shift could throw your family out of work. You know, your the breadwinners out of work or the I mean, it it's just it's very different than living in a in a southern community.

Markham: 42:17

And so I understand why Fort McMurray and some of the indigenous communities, in that area that work at the oil sands, you know, with the most people are employed at the oil sands, why they feel that way. And in it and I think you're absolutely right that anybody who talks about the energy transition, and that's my bag. That's what I do. Right? When I get to Alberta, it's well, all day, every day, I talk about the energy transition.

Markham: 42:40

Keeping that social and community component, uppermost in mind is an important thing. Now I'll I'll close with one final comment. If Alberta chose to build an advanced materials manufacturing industry using bitumen as a feedstock, it could conceivably build it big enough over time to take all of the oil, the bitumen that's currently produced now. It could provide an alternate market to the US so that you could imagine an Alberta future where you have both the retention of oil and gas employment add and then add on top of that advanced materials manufacturing. And so you could have the best of both possible worlds if you started now and you planned and you, you know, you've invested and took risks and did all the things that it would be required.

Markham: 43:35

But that's a vision for the future that never ever gets talked about in Alberta. It's always the other side, always the other approach. And, just as an FYI, we're gearing up to talk about that vision more, more fully and more often in in the very near future. It's part of our training course. Anyway, Parker, thank you very much.

Markham: 43:56

This has been fascinating and very timely because as I say, you know, we're discussing our training course and the role of climate change, whether it has a role in the discussion of the energy transition, particularly in Alberta. So this has been very useful. Thank you very much.

Parker: 44:10

Yeah. Thanks, Markham, for having me on. I really enjoyed it.