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A podcast dedicated to cleantech and the global path to net zero through innovation, capital, collaboration and strategy.
I think it has to be said that if we want clean transportation around the country, you have to be able to charge all these vehicles somehow, right? Well, it turns out that colleges and universities have thousands of acres of parking and available space. Now, by pulling them all together, we can create a network, which is what users want, both at the business level and at the consumer level. They want a transparent system.
where they can go and charge reliably. And that's what this project is all about. More electric vehicles on the road means quieter communities, cleaner air, and less reliance on fossil fuels. But space and budget constraints are slowing down the expansion of our EV charging infrastructure. What if we had the ideal testing ground to tackle those challenges head on? It turns out we do, right here in BC.
At Simon Fraser University and other post-secondary campuses, a new model for mixed-use EV charging is taking shape. Thanks to support from the BC Net Zero Innovation Networks EV Charging Alliance Working Group, not only are real-world solutions being tested, but new revenue streams and scalable models are being uncovered to fast-track the EV transition.
I'm Jeanette Jackson, CEO of Foresight Canada and your host of Clean Tech Forward. Today, we'll meet the innovators rethinking how we charge electric vehicles and why shared charging infrastructure on university and college campuses might hold the key to scaling EV transportation across BC and beyond. That's all coming up in just a moment.
Welcome to Clean Tech Forward. This season, we're exploring the challenges, opportunities, and real-world solutions shaping the future of British Columbia's clean transportation. Join us as we talk to leaders and innovators working to accelerate BC's path to a net-zero economy. One that benefits people, planet, and profits. From electric buses and tugboats to alternative fuels and shared infrastructure, buckle up.
for an electrifying ride into the future. Powered by Foresight Canada's BC Net Zero Innovation Network.
At Foresight Canada, we help the world do more with less sustainably. The BC Net Zero Innovation Network is a first-of-its-kind ecosystem platform that accelerates the adoption of clean technologies throughout BC's top industries. Clean air, clean water, clean transportation. And Net Zero economy starts here.
Today, I'm very excited. We've got Randy Zadra, who is our BC Net Zero Innovation Network Clean Transportation Advisor. I got all excited about this EV stuff about 15 years ago. I was at the MIT Media Lab at the time in Cambridge when we did a project called the Street Car. And it was one of the kind of forerunners of all the EV stuff. And I've also got with me David Agosti, who has been
leading up parking and sustainable mobility services for Simon Fraser University. And I think for the listeners, what I'll add in there is, you what that really means is I'm responsible for just about everything commuting related at all three of our campuses in Burnaby, Vancouver and Surrey here in BC. Randy and David here are part of this working group model that started out as we need to make sure that we strategically convene decision makers who are really serious about innovation and sustainability.
and we're seeing great momentum and success built from this working group model that Foresight facilitates and provides capacity for. Both of you seem very passionate about your work. I'd love to hear a little bit about your personal motivations for working in clean transportation. So from a let's say from an economic perspective, the transportation sector, the automotive sector is massive. It's like one of the largest contributors to, you know, GNP in Canada.
talking about the macro level. So there's lots of opportunities to do lots of different things. As I said, my own personal experience has been from kind of, OK, this is a cool thing. It's up and coming. And let's try and build something. That's what you do at MIT. So when we started discussing about charging,
That was one of the cogs in the wheel, right? You can't just build electric vehicles. You have to have the charging infrastructure too to make it all work. And the interesting thing about this is that we still have a ways to go in Canada and, know, foresight had the vision to demonstrate that this is something that could be worked on and, you know, that's what we're doing. Yeah. So for me, I'd say, you know, I
I prefer the term sustainable transportation over clean transportation. know, I'm at a university, we love our Venn diagrams. So, you know, I like to say with sustainable transportation, there's an environmental component, you know, which is your clean component, there's a financial component, which is pretty obvious, I would hope. And then there's a socio-cultural component. And it's those sorts of different components of people commuting or driving or just engaging in transport for different reasons that
that really kind of interests me and really drives me in this area. You know, here at SFU, we often use the term personas, right? So what's the most sustainable form of transportation for someone who's coming here nine to five? What's the most sustainable form of transportation for a shift worker? What's the most sustainable form of transportation for a single parent who may have deadlines for childcare? And then there's just all the other after hours thing. You know, I think later on,
probably talk about how a university is a city within a city. So what's the most sustainable way for someone who's coming to a university that has a hospital on campus? So it's all those different reasons for traveling and reasons for commuting and how you can make each of those personas, each of those situations more sustainable and how they go about their daily lives. That's the part that drives me. That's what really interests me. With the EV Charging Alliance Working Group,
Randy and David are exploring an innovative solution to address the challenges of our inadequate EV charging infrastructure. And since university and college campuses are like many urban centers, they're the perfect testing ground. David, let's dig into a little bit about this because I love how you talked about how a university is a city within a city or a community within a city. And as of 2023, British Columbia
has 25 publicly funded institutions. We've got universities, colleges, and other types of institutions, if you will. Why is mixed use EV charging infrastructure such an opportunity for institutions like universities and colleges? You know, we have dining on campus. We have transit on campus. So we can be that sort of micro level test bed, right?
And so a municipality who might have multiple hospitals, multiple entertainment districts, multiple community centers can look to that university as we go ahead and we do these things, we bring on these forms of sustainable transportation and say, hey, okay, that was a test bed. That was, you know, engaging that community. And now we can leverage that up.
our municipality as a whole. And then maybe we can leverage that up to the region as a whole. And then maybe we can leverage that up to, you know, the province as a whole. So I think that's a really important thing that universities have been able to do. And I won't hog the airtime, I'll throw it over to Randy, but I haven't even really mentioned, you know, the research piece of us being not just that testbed in terms of consumer behavior and experience.
but also in terms of data and open data that other people can look at. Randy, over to you. mean, maybe you can talk a little bit about, you know, the role these innovation sandboxes play beyond the innovation sandbox. The innovation that happens in universities, including SFU, is critical to make this happen. And that's one of the reasons I got involved in this project, because I thought it wasn't an abstract thing. You had SFU who had already thought this out and some other universities.
And that's good. That's what we need. We need leadership from our institutions. And then what we did was pull all the other ones in and, you know, created a roadmap as to where this project can go. And why this is important is because I think it has to be said that if we want clean transportation around the country, you have to be able to charge all these vehicles somehow, right? Well, it turns out that colleges and universities have thousands of acres of
parking in available space. But historically they've behaved individually on their own. Now by pulling them all together, we can create a network, which is what users want both at the business level and at the consumer level. They want a transparent system where they can go and charge reliably. And that's what this project is all about is really leveraging the space, the know-how of universities, the ability to be flexible. So
Here is an opportunity to leverage these institutions around BC, show that it works and potentially expand it across the country. And the visionaries that have been involved in the discussions really see this and there's tremendous support for it because let's call it spade to spade. What are the challenges to doing all this? First of all, in order to accelerate this new form of transportation, you need to have
reliable charging. And right now that's not the case. There isn't enough. It's not sufficiently reliable and it's not sufficiently cost effective. So these are some of the challenges we're trying to address in this project as well. So it's really a unique opportunity. You know, I think EV charging right now, EV adoption, all that sort of stuff, and I'm going to date myself here, is really at a VHS or beta moment where
we decide how that industry and how the adoption moves forward. Because I do think there is a necessary cultural change and philosophical change about how you think about transportation. For me, I like to try and hammer home, it's not about fueling, it's about parking. And my lovely partner,
always waits until her car has been on the little empty, you know, the little light comes on in her car before and a couple of days later, she thinks about maybe fueling up. And I can see you chuckling. So I'm guessing, Jeanette, you might possibly be somebody like that. I used to be until I went electric. And that's exactly my point, right? You cannot be that person with an electric vehicle. And I would further say today with it with
with a gasoline powered vehicle or what have you, Fueling is a task, right? I'm going to work and on the way home, I will stop for fuel. I'm going to Costco and on the way there, I will stop for fuel. To be successful and to now circle back to your question, you know, what this EV charging alliance can offer. To be successful, it can't be about fueling. It has to be about parking. It has to be about multitasking.
Right. So while you are at work, your car is fueling up. While your kid is at a 6 a.m. hockey practice, your car is fueling up. Right. While you are eating dinner or at Costco or at the shopping mall, your car is fueling up because you're plugged into a charger. And, you know, that's where I think this EV charging alliance comes in.
That's where we bring back in that a university or a college is a city within a city. People are coming here at different times of the day, on different days, for different reasons. And during and within all of those reasons, they can be plugged in and charging and fueling up. So I think that's really what this EV charging alliance brings. In the case of SFU's Burnaby campus right across the street are, you know, 10 year old
townhouses and apartments that are what are generally referred to as garage orphans, right? They don't have charging in the building, but they can just come across the street and charge at my facilities. So we're the same, but we're different. But in that difference, we can meet the needs of so many different stakeholder groups. Businesses that rely on vehicles to deliver goods are also stakeholders in this ecosystem. Transitioning to electric
helps them save on fuel costs, but they also need access to convenient charging options to make it work. We've all seen those white cars or little vans dropping off our Amazon purchase order, right? Down our street. All of those business fleets are also transitioning to EV. And the reason they're transitioning to EV is sure they want to be good corporate citizens, but those guys spend about
$2,500 or more on average for gas each month. So if you start doing the math, it makes great sense for them to transition to clean technology. That's first add on I'd like to make to David's comments. There's a real need on the business side as well for those kinds of guys. And the cool thing about that is that colleges and universities parking lots are empty at night and that's when those guys need to charge.
typically for seven or eight hours, right? They're working during the day and they need a place to go and charge their, you know, their, little vans that they have to do all, and there's a whole bunch of those companies. It's clear that the collaborative charging model being developed by Randy and David and the EV Charging Alliance is more than just promising, it's practical.
Creating a network of mixed-use EV charging hubs could unlock real benefits for surrounding residents, businesses, and institutions that keep communities moving along. Universities and colleges are an ideal testing ground. They have the space, the users, and the momentum. But the reality is, installing charging infrastructure is costly and complex.
How can we fund and scale promising mixed-use EV charging models? And who else needs to be at the table to turn this model into a movement? First, let's look at an untapped resource with major potential. Carbon credits.
maybe we want to have a little bit of a chat about carbon credits because BC is uniquely positioned on carbon credits because it has two types of credits without getting too technical. This is money that comes to the service provider, if you will, at the end of the year for delivering clean fuel essentially. And there's two types. There's a British, there's a BC carbon credit and there's a federal carbon credit. And just to kind of cut to the chase,
One of those electric vehicles that, you know, those white things that come down your street, if those guys charge every night at say David's facility, they would generate $17,000 per vehicle on average of carbon credits. So this is also good business. It's not just about doing corporate social responsibility. It's also about good business. And that's the way it needs to work in order for the
you know, the climate initiatives to go forward. No, this is, this is really interesting. I mean, at the end of the day, what we're trying to do is show that innovation or new ways of thinking, in this case, new ways of fueling, we're optimizing the value of infrastructure and assets and turning sort of the net zero transition into good business, making sure that everyday decision makers, whether you're managing a fleet or
You know, like you, David, you and your, you know, the institutions trying to move people around as fast and efficiently as possible. There's other economic and social opportunities, you know, that are tied to that. So I think what we're, what we're trying to do is, you know, we did some back of the envelope math and you know, the average car traveling the average distance charging at home needs about eight hours of charging a week, right?
So far, SFU's test environment were charging vehicles, meaning flowing electrons, 10 hours per day. Right? So what's that? Like a factor of nine, something like that? And I think that's where this EV charging alliance can really prove its benefit to the universities and to the community as a whole. Right? It's that efficient use of the infrastructure. So to Randy's comment about, say, carbon credits,
If you don't know what they are, it's the BCLCFS Low Carbon Fuel Standard. You can go ahead and Google that. SFU has shared some of our data in an open source way. I believe it's through IEEE. But again, just Google SFU Public EV Charging Dataset. You can find it and look it up. But the more energy we flow through those chargers, the more carbon credits we can capture.
the more we can flip that money in to installing more infrastructure. The question probably on everyone's mind, what exactly is a carbon credit? How do they work? And how might a university or business that's generating clean energy take advantage of them? Something that the common, you know, consumer or, you know, person using transportation might not understand is that there are carbon credit opportunities available.
individually, for fleets, and for building infrastructure, and broadly the province when it comes to capitalizing infrastructure. Why don't you walk us through simply, if you were talking to someone off the street, what would you say about carbon credits and how they can potentially help alleviate those financial burdens? Yeah, that's really critical because there's a, I have to say there's a huge
lack of awareness and even in this project we found that the majority of the universities were really not aware of carbon credits or how they work or how it's money in their pocket which is sad because you know this is a time when they really need revenues and so okay what's let's start with the concept of what's a carbon credit right so first of all a carbon credit let me tell you what it is not it is not a government subsidy okay
and many ministers in other provinces think it is, it is not. A carbon credit is revenue that comes to an entity that delivers clean fuel at the end of the year and that money comes from an exchange. And so you have the big polluters, the big emitters who have to pay into the exchange. Carbon credit is not
a subsidy from the government. is revenue that comes from this market, from the carbon market that's created by large emitters contributing because they have to. people who are delivering clean fuels are benefiting. You know, the formula for how to calculate it is very technical. Obviously, we won't go into that. But that's something that we recommended we do as part of the project is that we train maybe for
Of course, I could take this on. could train the colleges and universities who are not aware of this to really ramp up and really understand what role carbon credits play in the business opportunity, because it's significant. I mentioned earlier what you could get from an electric delivery vehicle if it was fueled every night for 265 days a year. It's really significant. And BC, along with Quebec, are two provinces which have this dual
carbon credit structure because there are two types. There are provincial ones and there is a federal one. Two levels of carbon credits that clean fuel suppliers can avail themselves of. And it's happening. think, you know, David and his team at Simon Fraser has done a great job starting to get those carbon credits, but many others can also avail themselves of that in terms of developing, in terms of building it into their business plan.
because it makes a huge difference. David, do you want to chime in on these sort of tradable assets? Yeah, so I'll use I'll use another movie reference trading places with Eddie Murphy and Dan Aykroyd. They were selling pork bellies. Yeah. So us the the purveyors of the electricity is fuel. We are the sellers of the pork bellies. And the other corporate institutions like refineries and so on and so forth. They are the
of the pork bellies. You know, the unfortunate thing is that it is a little bit of a Wild West. It's not actually a trading market. You have to literally pick up the phone and call the people listed as buyers and say, will you buy my stuff? And the federal programs, CFR, you qualify differently than the provincial program. And I won't go into all the details, but that's also one of the things that the EV charging a lot.
is trying to solve is to make sure that we qualify for both because you qualify in different ways. The last thing I would say is a lot of people have probably heard about challenges at the university level with funding and international students. Yes, absolutely, this is a revenue stream. But over time, these carbon credits are probably going to go away. Over time, we're going to be in a completely clean fuel environment.
So certainly from our perspective, the idea is to use these funds to reinvest. You if we have 50 EV chargers on campus, we're going to collect that revenue and go to a hundred and go to 150 and go to 200 and so on and so forth. So that's, that's our grand master plan is one of reinvestment. Carbon credits offer a clear financial incentive for expanding EV charging infrastructure on campus. And if those funds are reinvested in future charging facilities,
even better. But carbon credits are just one piece of the puzzle. For the impact of this to scale, industry and government need to be a part of the solution. The good news, here in BC, momentum is building. With leaders like Randy and David at the table, the path to an electrified, more connected transportation system is becoming clearer and more achievable every day.
We've talked a lot about, so BC as an ideal environment to take this sector to the next level. We've got policy, we've got CleanBC kind of commitments politically. We've got some funding that's, you know, seeded some pilots and things like that. What we also know is that in British Columbia, we are one of the provinces that is influenced heavily by the two energy companies. We've got BC Hydro and Fortis, obviously.
both of whom play a pretty significant role but are also at the table for this project. So, we'd love to hear from both of you, what role does BC Hydro play in enabling or expanding shared use EV charging infrastructure and how is this project going to inform or excite some of their opportunities there? First of all, companies like BC Hydro, as you said, have been very supportive. They've funded this project.
among other things. And I think there's a recognition in the company that they need to leverage partners to get to where they want to be. And that's a good vision to have because not all utilities behave that way. I think in the case of BC Hydro, there's a real understanding that you can leverage other assets in the province. And that's that's what they're doing. And they're helping us to do that, even though they themselves are rolling out some
charging infrastructure, they understand that complementary infrastructure is also needed. So that's the kind of strategic understanding that's needed. Bottom line is BC Hydro Fortis, again, it's the cultural, the strategic understanding that they need to play a very important role in this sector and in BC, they're very uniquely able to do that, unlike some other places in Canada. So.
I would say they're very strategic partners and assets in all of this. That's great. Yeah, we've noticed over the last couple of years with some of the new leadership and board members at BC Hydro, the opportunity to engage on innovation and new strategies for distributed energy infrastructure has really opened up. And I'm excited that this project ties to that philosophy and that culture development. Yeah, I've worked with some other.
very large utilities and other provinces and it's a different kind of culture. And part of that is because of government policy, right? That it all starts with the policy that's outlined. Take Ontario, for instance, it's very clear that it's a little bit different there. So, you know, the utilities behave differently. But as I said earlier, BC is very ideally positioned. Everybody's kind of marching in the same direction. So it's great to see.
I love that. So, you know, one of the things that we assess when we're working on programs is what problem are we solving? What are some of the barriers that you are working to overcome or are still to be overcome through this working group and maybe some of your other initiatives that support this working group? Yeah, so, you know, there are very similar problems that we have elsewhere when it comes to innovation, I believe. The first one being that
In Canada, generally speaking, we're risk averse when it comes to doing something innovative, right? So how do we mitigate that is by demonstrating that it's not as high a risk as you think. And that's what this project is about. By working together, we can mitigate risk for the CFOs who will eventually have to take decisions on putting money on this project in each and every institution. OK, that's the number one thing we need to demonstrate that.
We've thought this out that it's not as risky as it could be. And the second thing is really creating a market, creating a provincial market, creating a national market for this kind of thing. We've got to break down these barriers. We've got to get people working together to create a more scalable service at a lower cost. You know, we want to really demonstrate that we can get rid of resistance to change, right? By showing that
These projects can be a good business for the players involved and that by working together You can do more you can do it more efficiently You can do it better for the consumer and for the business side. I think this is where you know Foresight plays a critical role because that's a huge missing piece right now with the right coordination and collaboration catalyzed by these kinds of projects
we could move toward a true made-in-Canada solution that benefits local businesses and communities alike. Let me give you an example, So this project is going to entail purchasing a lot of technology, software technology, hardware, chargers. Okay, we have all that stuff in Canada. It's all disjointed. It's all over the place. And we can actually pull together, you know, the kind of stuff that's being talked about in the news these days.
and build something that not only offers a service, but accelerates Canadian technology and including software and hardware. All of these things that we need here are available in Canada. Not necessarily the case right now in terms of how it's being deployed, but we could pull all that together and really build something that has, you know, economic, let's say it becomes an economic engine for those suppliers as well. I mean, we're talking about
10 to 20 million dollars just in BC. These are not small projects, right? And then across the country, it's probably going to be 100 million plus if we do this. So in order to scale in a good way, we need to bring all these pieces together, find Canadian suppliers, bring them into the picture. And then we haven't talked about subsidies, whether it's California or the US or Canada. This is a sector that has been subsidized by government programs, right?
to the tune of about 50 % of chargers and software that's going in. That will continue to be the case. Those programs will continue going. And so that's an important element as well. Both in BC, there's numerous programs available for providing public subsidies as well as the national level. And David has done an awesome job. We meet regularly with all the funders for this.
kind of lining them up because they have a huge role to play as well. But I think one of the unique things about this project is that if we can scale it, that also becomes an economic development project. It's not just a subsidy to put two chargers in the local library. So aggregating demand, creating a scaled up project has a number of other implications for economic development, which we haven't yet leveraged, frankly.
And that's one of the unique things about this project. It's really amazing. That's why I got excited actually, because it's, you you can pull all that stuff together and, you know, kind of meet multiple objectives at the same time. You can help Canadian companies who are providing technology. You can deliver a great service. You can make money for the colleges and universities. These are pretty unique aspects to any project. Like it's not often that you get that kind of thing.
Yeah, and I think that's because of the nature of the BC Net Zero Innovation Network. It's an ecosystem approach, you know, to innovation or problem solving, if you will. It's really about deploying technology to get it at scale so that it's exportable and it's exportable not just as a one-off company, but as a turnkey solution for other markets.
And I think sometimes what we see is you've got a whole bunch of independent companies going after markets and one solves this piece of the value chain and another solves this piece of the value chain and they're not working together. Whereas projects like this give us the ability to consolidate all of that knowledge, that technology into concrete packages that we can then market, you know, to other places who are going to need this infrastructure once the models are proven. And by the way,
It's extremely hard to export when you haven't done something at home. And so I applaud, you know, SFU and the other partners in the working group for being really open and embracing that there might be a little bit of risk and that's okay. Risk is good. We're gonna learn along the way. It's not gonna be perfect. We're gonna find out which technologies make sense, which aren't gonna be applicable here. You know, do we need to create something new out of some of the gaps in the value chain for this entire project?
All these things, like you said, they're exciting, they're ambitious, but they make business sense while supporting our climate transition as well. Yeah, so I'll throw an ask into this and this is sort of directed towards the funders. And I mean, if you look at a project like this, there are six or seven major steps to the project, right? There's, say, a business analysis, a business case where you look at what your parking supply is, who your...
stakeholders you could service are, right? Then you're doing, you know, an electrical engineering assessment or something along those lines. Then, you know, you're doing the installation, you're getting the EV chargers. You know, then there's a whole software piece, both customer facing and backend. Then there's a whole further contractual piece. Are you working with light duty fleets? Are you working with stratas? And then there's, you know, I think the IP, the intellectual property portion of it,
where you're developing manuals and playbooks so that you can leverage this across other provinces, other campuses, that sort of thing. Right now, there's no funder that will allocate money to all of those six or seven steps in the process. So we have to go to funder A for say the business case piece, funder B for say the hardware piece.
funders see. So I mean, you know, that's one of the challenges we're facing moving forward. And so why we're trying to get and have succeeded, actually, I do have to give the funders, both the government agencies and the NGOs credit for this, you know, they have been really interested in sitting in the room and, trying to figure this out. But you know, at the end of the day, some of that is politics and, and policy. And we'd really like to see that solved. You know, the other thing is,
There's a springboard to the whole made in Canada developed in Canada piece, right? So right now we've just talked about those six pieces that I've mentioned and there are people in Canada that do all of those things. But we're already blue sky and other things we could do. So a simple example is right now it goes power supply, meaning from hydro to the EV charger to the car, right? You could go
power supply to battery to EV charger to the car. And for hospitals and universities, could that eliminate the need for backup diesel generators? Could that mean that we're drawing power from the grid at low demand times? Because for organizations like Hydro, it's not just how much power you need, but when you need it. So we have this plan and this concept now, but we're also fully realizing that there's an ability for
researchers and entrepreneurs within Canada to take that to step two and to step three and to step four. And you know that's one of the things that really excites me as well is you know we don't need to stop here. We can keep going. Thank you to Randy Zadra from the BC Net Zero Innovation Network and David Agosti from Simon Fraser University for joining me today, sharing their passion and showing us how collaboration and momentum are moving our communities forward sustainably.
We have serious activators in the ecosystem ready to trial and deploy technology pathways that are not only a benefit to that community, but communities around the world. And not only that, it's a repeatable model that can be applied to many other sectors and situations. So I hope that everyone got a real taste on what we can do if we've got working groups in action. If I were to leave our listeners with a final aha moment for this episode,
Especially if you're someone with influence, funding, or passion to advance clean transportation, it's this. The technology exists. The models are working. Now it's about bringing the right collaborators to the table. When we connect innovators like Randy and David with the resources and support they need, when businesses, government, and community work together, we adopt real solutions and accelerate tangible impact. That's how we build a cleaner, more sustainable, and connected future for our children and for generations to come.
Not someday, but right here, right now.
Next time on Clean Tech Forward. What if garbage trucks moved in silence? What if buses didn't just transport passengers, but powered the grid? Join me as we explore the future of electrified municipal fleets and the BC innovators making it possible. Be sure to subscribe so you don't miss it.
Clean Tech Forward is fueled by Foresight Canada's BC Net Zero Innovation Network, powered by Pacific Economic Development Canada and the Government of British Columbia. Learn more about how BC is driving the future of clean transportation at ForesightCAC.com slash British Columbia.
Clean Tech Forward is an everything podcasts production hosted by Jeanette Jackson and narrated by me Tamara Stanners show runner and writer Jessica Grachik sound engineer Jordan Wong executive producer Jennifer Smith
Another Everything Podcast production. Visit everythingpodcast.com, a division of Patterson Media. Subscribe wherever you get your podcast.