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Journalist Markham Hislop interviews leading energy experts from around the world about the energy transition and climate change.
Welcome to episode 287 of the Energy Talks podcast. I'm energy and climate journalist, Markham Hisler. Today's episode is special because we're recording my my conversation with National Observer columnist Sandy Garasino in front of a live audience in Parksville on beautiful Vancouver Island. Sandy and I will be talking about the rise of China as a global clean energy superpower and what that means for Canada. Spoiler alert, it's not good, especially for the oil and gas sector headquartered in Alberta.
Markham:The irony is that Canadians are generally unaware of the threat that China poses. We're busy fighting about carbon taxes or emission caps, focused on our internal squabbles, all the while ignoring the global energy transition that China now dominates. Why is Canada napping when it should be preparing to do economic battle with a new and fearsome foe? This is just one of the many questions Sandy and I will be tackling during our conversation. So Sandy, welcome to the interview.
Sandy:Great to be here, Markham. Thanks for having me.
Markham:Well, it is a pleasure and this is a this
Sandy:is a first. Everybody.
Markham:Good to see everybody. This is a first for us, and we hope that it'll be the first of many. Why are you so interested in China?
Sandy:Well, part of part of it is because I'm I'm I'm in the middle of developing my own podcast with a a friend of mine, Vina Najibullah, and we're we're it's a podcast on, it's called it'll be called Mortal Giants and it's about, the underlying influences that are driving the geopolitical tensions of the of the world and we started out with we started out looking at China. Vina is a China expert and so we were looking at China from a huge range, of perspectives, including the cyber issue and and many other many other facets, but then we started to to drill down into climate and holy smokes. Holy moly was basically how I felt just doing a little bit of basic research.
Markham:I wanna tell you a story. Last year, I was googling Gina Raimondo Yep. Who is the US Secretary of Commerce. And she was giving speeches about US industrial policy. And she explained why the US did the $370 infrastructure act, the $280 Chips Act, the inflation reduction act, which is estimated at 380,000,000,000, but will probably be a a $1,000,000,000,000.
Markham:Why is the US spending close to $2,000,000,000,000? And what she said was that the 1st year of the pan the the COVID 19 pandemic was a big wake up call because what the United States understood for the very first time was how vulnerable they were to Chinese supply chains. They didn't know it before. They had spent the last 30 years or so offshoring their manufacturing, and then they discovered that China made everything they they they consumed and everything they wanted to consume in the in the future. And what they said was it the point, I guess, that I wanna make to you given the that you're embarking on this new podcast is it looks like China is where America was coming out of the World War 2.
Markham:It's the preeminent industrial power. It looks like Europe and and the United States are now scrambling madly to catch up. It's almost like a clean energy, arms race. What are some of the implications for Canada of that?
Sandy:Well, I would just back up a little bit because China itself is is running into some pretty serious headwinds. You know, their foreign direct investment has fallen off a cliff since COVID, and Xi Jinping is emerging as a the kind of leader that the West has that the world has not seen out of China since Mao Zedong. So and in addition to the the loss of foreign direct investment, as there's been an abandonment by a lot of tech sectors and a lot of, major major and major corporations. They're doing what they call the China plus 1, but let's face it. A lot of that is decoupling.
Sandy:And in addition to that, there's been a collapse in the real estate market, and that has been a huge housing bubble. It's just it has just collapsed, and and, Evergrande, as you've as people have seen, anybody who's following that gigantic, condo, real estate consortium, is now facing, I think, fraud charges. So China's got its own problems cut out for it. It's not quite on the cusp of this grand plan. In a way, I think it's looking to, and in fact, it's it has said that it's looking to, both technology and to clean energy as the new pillars.
Sandy:It the most recent, plenary of their of their government that happened in March, they came out saying that the days of what they call the old three, which was clothing, like Nike clothing and all the things that were manufactured, clothing, furnishings, and home appliances. That was the that's that's the old three. The new three that are going to be the the, pillars of the China of China's economy are going to be clean energies, renewable energy, batteries and e v's. And so they they're betting big. They are betting in a very big way.
Sandy:It's looking very good for them. They're about to face some pretty organized, responses from the EU and from the United States and Canadian allies as other our allies as well.
Markham:I don't doubt that for a moment. I don't think, Canada and and the sorry. The EU and the US are up to the challenge. I really don't. Take solar panel modules.
Markham:China now is down to 11¢ a watt. The EU is at 22¢ a watt and manufacturers are going bankrupt left and right, and the US is at 40¢ a watt and has no clue how it's going to get down to be competitive with the tariffs.
Sandy:Where you that's where the tariffs come in. Good old Donald Trump's favorite solution. Right?
Markham:Well, if you I but who's gonna put on a 300% tariff? I mean, they're they're in big trouble. And the what you're seeing now I do a lot of work reporting on the what's going on in the US power sector. They are frantically installing battery storage. They are frantically installing as much wind and solar as they can because their utilities are retiring their thermal plants, their coal and and gas plants, and they're getting caught short.
Sandy:Mhmm.
Markham:And they're and they're also reengineering them in the sense that they're bringing in power electronics and digital controls and AI and stuff that we aren't even aware of here in Canada. Mhmm. I interviewed, Adaraman who's the grant grid planner for, the system operator in Alberta last week, and I asked him this question. He said, well, we're studying it. We're getting around to it.
Markham:We're, you know, we're we're we're aware of these changes that are taking place. Well, China is already in the process of building 255 giant solar farms in the Mongolian desert.
Sandy:Not to not to mention their rooftop solar, which is now exceeding their massive solar farms.
Markham:Isn't that an amazing
Sandy:story? Astonishing.
Markham:Solar is rooftop solar in China is half of all the solar that gets installed every
Speaker 3:year. Yep.
Markham:They are and their their solar panel factories are only operating at 38%. So here's I'm gonna go I have a little hypothesis here, and I'll run this past you and you can tell me whether it's reasonable or not. OPEC thinks that the non OECD world so we're talking about the emerging economies in Latin America and Africa and some of the the Asian economies. They will stick with oil and gas. That's the sort of slow energy transition argument that they make that, you know, premier Daniel Smith in Alberta, the oil companies are all bought into.
Markham:But the I think that what's likely more likely to happen is because solar and wind are so cheap now, especially paired with batteries, that if you're in Africa, if you're in Latin America, you're not going to take oil and gas. You're gonna take you're gonna buy the cheapest energy you can get your hands on. And in addition to that, you talked about geopolitical tension. If you're not importing oil and if you're not importing gas, you're producing all of your energy at home domestically with your own technology, then you in fact have a lot more energy security and geopolitical security than you would have otherwise.
Sandy:Mhmm.
Markham:And you see India starting to do that and plenty of Brazil starting to do that. So what does it seems like the whole energy the global energy system is not only being transformed, but it's been thrown into a blender, and we have no idea in some senses how it's gonna come out.
Sandy:Well and I think that one of the reasons why the oil and gas sector and why a lot of, political leaders, are kind of not really being aware of these changes is because they are still looking at, the gross numbers, which are very high. You know, China's consumption of fossil fuels is very high. It's at record levels. And what a lot of us in from the environmental community look at when we see solar has more than doubled, we go, this is astonishing, and it is. But if you look in the gross picture at the graphs, it still is barely moving the dial.
Sandy:But if you look at just from twin like I say, from 2,007, 8, 74% to 55% drop in, in power usage, that is a that's pretty significant. I I see both sides to this. I see why the industry people, tend to think this is this isn't gonna be a problem this quarter or next quarter or next fiscal year. You know, our shareholders are not gonna have any problem with this. We're just gonna keep on going.
Sandy:This is that, I mean, we know that this is how how the C suite thinks and addresses all issues. You and I, Markham, are now old enough when I was a when I was young, I thought 25 years was forever. And now I know it's the blink of an eye, and that I think is the is, you know, people like Danielle Smith, she's she she doesn't have to think about 25 years from now. She doesn't have to think about the retirement of her of the workers in her in the oil and gas sector or how they're gonna pay for health care. She's just, you know, how are the polls this week?
Sandy:So our short term thinking kind of makes it very easy to avert our eyes from the these very dramatic changes.
Markham:Now we've got MP Gorejohns in the in the audience tonight, and so that reminds me of the federal government's commitment to industrial policy. And I think we should make the point that, you know, 25 years ago, the Chinese government took a look at its auto industry and said, we're never gonna compete with North America. We're never gonna compete with the Germans. We can't make an engine as well as and as cheap as they can. So they put all their money.
Markham:The government decided they were going to get into what they call new energy vehicles. That means not only just the vehicles, it also means the batteries and the supply chains for the batteries and all of that everything that goes with it and the fuel, which is now the electricity that goes into it. So it's all works together, and what they did is they brought in, in some ways, very traditional industrial policy. The government subsidized the development of those industries, then it it developed sorry. It subsidized the adoption of those industries by the consumers, by the companies, and so on.
Markham:And it kind of worked together. It worked really, really well together. And so here we are staring down the barrel of it. And, you know, deputy premier, Chrystia Freeland, has said we need muscular industrial policy. And what do we have?
Markham:Well, Jonathan Wilkinson, the natural resources minister told me we have three things. We have the carbon tax, we have regulations, and we have subsidies. China would laugh at that. It's not a proactive kind of strategy. Basically, what they do is the few folks at the Green Growth Fund or whatever pot of money the Liberals have put together, what they do is they sit and they wait for applications.
Markham:Mhmm. That's not what China did. China went out and proactively developed EV manufacturing. 5 years ago, there were 700. Now there's a 100.
Markham:And then, you know, 2 years from now, there'll probably be 50. Mhmm. And they did the same thing with the with the solar panel mount manufacturers and that wind turbine manufacturers. And the government there is not constrained in the way a democratic government is. That means that we have to be a little more clever with our industrial policy, and instead, it looks to me like we're being less clever.
Markham:I don't know. Your thoughts?
Sandy:It's I mean, this is this is such an interesting question because, yes, it's true that that China did that. But at the time that China did that, this was a very small part of its overall economic overall economic policy. And it did recognize that, you know, it was not an oil producing country. It was, it was going it was looking for energy independence. Strategically, it was looking for energy independence.
Sandy:That was the thing. They would have loved to have the problem that Canada has, which is the oil sense. The oil sense is such a huge part of our GDP. It's it's very hard to make this shift in a way that Alberta doesn't take personally because they take everything personally. But so I I think that and China doesn't go to the polls in the way that we go to the polls.
Sandy:I don't know if if the if we have the political capital for something like that. But I do think that in general, something that has been missing from the public discourse around government policy is the very important role that government plays in, in stimulating particular sectors. But you have to be very smart about how you do that. Taiwan, when the leadership of Taiwan decided in the 19 eighties that they wanted to go after the electronics market, but in particular, they wanted to go after microchips and semiconductors. They wanted to be the world leaders in the in the production of semiconductors.
Sandy:And are they ever they they bought they basically wrote a blank check, a blank check to bring in and start almost from scratch, not quite from scratch, but almost from scratch, the, the company now called TSMC, which is probably the most important, technology company in the world because it makes the most advanced semiconductors in the world that are in all of our smart devices and that will drive AI and are making everything making the future possible. We are absolutely dependent on it. That was a government decision. The invention and creation and development of the semiconductor was a US government military decision. They got behind it.
Sandy:They got behind Texas Instruments. They got behind Intel. They provided those contracts that created the modern world. I just heard an economist the other day talking about how, well, if government would just get out of the way and lower taxes and have and cut spending, then the economy would bloom. But if you look at the engines that have driven massive development around the world and driven prosperity, And in China, we're seeing it with the EVs, and they are going to have prosperity come out of the out of new energy technology.
Sandy:In the United States, with technology and all that whole Silicon Valley, the richest people in the world are, made their fortunes on that. And there Taiwan, Almost everywhere you look for major success stories, you see government working hand in glove with the corporate sector. But in every case, they use something very specific, a gift that their population or their country had. Taiwan had the capacity, the manufacturing capacity to do this. Taiwan was far better than Texas.
Sandy:That's why they were attracting all these all these companies to build manufacturing plants there. Asia is, has just proven itself to be massively better at manufacturing. That's China's advantage now. Are we going to compete in manufacturing? I don't think so.
Sandy:So I think that's a real challenge for government leaders, for corporate leaders, But we are not we are failing on the corporate side of where's the research and development? Where is the r and d? Where is, you know, it's easy enough to say, well, tax us less and spend and and cut spending, but, okay, what are you gonna do with it?
Markham:Well, I wanna tell you, your your comments about the American government are poignant because I was reading Mariana Muzaccato, the American British economist, whose book the 2016 book, The Entrepreneurial State. And she said, do not do don't don't listen to what the Americans say. Look at what they do. And what they've done since the 2nd World War is they have put public money into developing the science, developing the new technologies in the lab, and then derisking it along the development stage, whether it's DARPA or it's Department of Energy or whatever it is.
Sandy:Or the chips all of the infrastructure now.
Markham:All of all of that stuff. And so the we we fell. We bit on the Milton Friedman neoliberalism, get government, get out of the economy, and I guess to some extent the Americans did too after 1980. But they built their economy with government as an active an activist state supporting all of that technology and funding it. And so I have a friend, a colleague of mine that I do some work with, and I interview him sometimes, doctor Bentley Allen at John Hopkins University.
Markham:He's done some consulting work with the federal government. He said, Markham, I have to go in and consult with the finance department in Canada because they've forgotten how to do industrial policy. 40 years ago, 50 years ago, 60 years ago, everybody did industrial policy. That's how we got Nortel. That's how we got some of those big companies that were world leaders at the time.
Markham:I think even Blackberry, if I'm not mistaken. And we forgot how. After 1980, you know, we had Thatcher and we had Reagan. It was all it was all government get out of out of the economy. And all of the this intellectual horsepower that had been in the finance department that could write the policy, do the research, knew the issues, gone.
Markham:And so now we're faced with an existential crisis from China and from other places with all of these new clean energy technologies that are gonna undercut oil and gas and other industries that are important to to our economy, and we don't know how to do it anymore.
Sandy:Well, I'm terribly anxious to hear what Pierre Polayev's ideas are about how Canada's future economy is going
Speaker 4:to Tax the tax. Yeah. Well
Markham:But here but but this is a but this is Gordon raised this earlier, which is the carbon tax debate is absolutely consuming us. And you talked about political capital. What are we doing? We're spending all our political capital on the wrong things, on the absolute wrong things. We should be thinking about how we position ourselves in the clean energy technology.
Markham:We have innovative companies that do you know we make electric vehicles here in Parkville? No. You didn't know that? It's the craziest thing. There's a little company out in the industrial park that makes their little their little EVs that you that you use at, airports to haul things around.
Markham:You know, you see them hauling around the the suitcases and what have you. They're made in Parksville. If you can make EVs in Parksville and do it profitably, you can do a lot of this stuff anywhere. Now I have a a a friend of mine. He's a member of the Energy Circle with, with, Roy.
Markham:His name is James Van Lewen. He lives in Pincher Creek, Alberta, which is the place where they started building wind turbines in Alberta, like, 30 years ago. And they want they understand. He understands, and he's brought parts of the community to understand that when you have, abundant, clean, low cost electricity, you have an amazing competitive advantage for economic development because there are companies that want that and they can't get it next to a coal plant, and they can't get it next to a gas plant. But if they can come and locate an industrial park in Pincher Creek, Alberta and set up shop there, it's the energy input that is the thing that attracts them.
Markham:They can ship whatever they're making. They make a lot. You know, it has enough high value but can handle the transportation cost. It's the energy, and we have that one of the project our first campaign out of the energy circles is gonna be about a western grid. Alberta and Saskatchewan have amazing solar and wind resources.
Markham:Manitoba and British Columbia have amazing hydro resources. Hydro dams act as big batteries for intermittent power, intermittent wind and solar. When the wind is blowing and when the sun is shining, you export power from Alberta to BC. BC Hydro shuts down its turbines or runs them at a slower speed. They build up water in their reservoir, and they buy the cheap, you know, 1 or 2¢ a kilowatt hour electricity from Alberta.
Markham:When the sun is not shining and the wind is not blowing, they let the water through their turbines and they send it back to Alberta. And if instead of going north and south like DC insists on doing, PowerX and DC Hydro and Manitoba Hydro for that matter, and we did this and we went east and west and looked out for our own energy needs, we could create an east west electricity market that would that would support the development of wind and solar at huge scale here in Western Canada. Are we talking about that idea? No, because we're talking about acts the tax. That's the problem.
Markham:The conversation gets hijacked over these silly squabbles or political strategies or these whatever wherever it comes from, we're talking about the wrong thing, And we need to start talking about the right thing. And that's the kind of stuff that Sandy's talking about. Now I don't know where we go from here, Sandy, so maybe I'll ask you just to respond to what I said.
Sandy:Well, I I mean, my perspective on all of this is that somewhere out there are some huge opportunities for the Canadian economy, but I'm not a person who's got any way of assessing what's good what's a good idea or what's a bad idea. But I think we do have to we do have to do some very serious, considering and and, you know, picking winners picking winners and and, going with that. But one of the one of the challenges that Canada has as far as is raising venture capital. Just about everybody that I know who is looking in this sphere, well, it it's so easy to raise capital if you're in California or even in Washington state. It's hard to raise capital here.
Sandy:You know, this is I think that and that has a really that's a that's a real weight on an economy when it's very hard for for,
Speaker 5:for,
Sandy:for a lot of this kind of, entrepreneurial spirit. Most of the people that I know I remember being at a dinner not that long ago with, and the person next to me was, worked for Sauter Business School and she was talking about and I was asking, well, what does everybody what is everybody wanting to do? And I was asking because I had a very specific question in my mind, in the back of my mind, because my son had just spent a year, at, the National University of Singapore, in their business department, and everybody there already had a business. All the other students, they already had businesses, and so I asked, well, what do what do the kids coming out of Sodder want to do? Banking.
Sandy:They all want well, that's just for you know what? That's just another job at. You know? That's not real that's not real business. Working in a in for the for RBC, helping with wealth management or I'm sorry if there's anybody from RBC.
Sandy:I'm a big investor. But, but what I mean is that these are not this is not productive use of these young people that we are paying to educate to build the economy of tomorrow. It's not going to be RBC that builds the economy of tomorrow. It's going to be people who actually have some gumption and then other people who will invest in them. We don't have that culture, and I I I'd love to have some answers.
Sandy:Would be great to have a government that really wanted to get behind that, and I do that's something that I I a flaw that I see with all of our national parties. I do not feel that there is a huge energy around a confident, optimistic, committed way that we are going to create the future together.
Markham:Well, even in BC, I mean, which is one of the you see in Quebec lead in this area And I'd say BC's, industrial policy is pretty tepid. And the irony is that they had Mariana Mozzacatto as a consultant early on in the, 2018, 2019 period. I wanna tell you a story. So I have a friend that I've interviewed a number of times. He was one he's one of the world's best battery scientists, doctor James Frith.
Markham:And I knew him got to know him when he was the head of battery science for Bloomberg NEF. And he used to come on my podcast all the time and tell me what was the latest thing going on with batteries. And we were on we were having a chat, and he said, yeah, we're putting $50,000,000 into this, Canadian company called, Summit Nanotech. And I went, hold the phone. You mean Amanda Hall in Summit Nanotech?
Markham:And he went, yeah. That's a friend of mine. So in 2018, I was giving a keynote speech at the geophysicist, geoscientist conference in Calgary. Amanda gave me a ride out to the to the airport, and we got chatting, and we got you know, became friends. And she was frustrated because as a geoscientist, CNRL would never listen to her advice.
Markham:She said, you know, we could if we develop this membrane and we could do this so much cheaper and so much more efficiently, and they would just blow her off. And she said, that's it. I've had enough. And shortly after I I met her, she started Summit Nanotech. And what her innovation is is she has technology that direct that sucks lithium directly out of briny water out of briny water.
Markham:And the best place for this is Chile, where they currently have a lithium. But whereas at Chile, you have to mine it and then put it in an evaporating pond for 18 months. She gets her lithium in a day. And her technology now is so good that James and well, he moved over to a company called Volta and they do these kinds of the venture capitalists. They put $50,000,000 into her company.
Markham:They're based out of Silicon Valley. He's based out of the UK. She's based in Calgary. How long do you think it's gonna be before she moves down to the US or moves someplace else? And there are examples up through example after example just like that.
Speaker 6:Mhmm.
Markham:I don't know. Well, now get a lot of
Sandy:That's part of the problem of being adjacent to to these massive massive brain engines. Is is it it it is it is a challenge. But it's a challenge. It's a challenge that that our leadership needs to meet, and we need to be talking about a lot more. But I'm interested to hear if people have questions.
Sandy:Well, hang
Markham:on a second. I just a few more minutes, and then we'll get to the to the q and a. Gotta let the host determine if
Sandy:I good questions.
Markham:There I bet you there are lots of good questions. One of the because we need to finish this thought about where we go with with politicians and with government. And we've got a couple we got an MLA here. We've got an MP here. But we, you and I know the provincial policies and the federal policies well enough.
Markham:There is not an activist government. This is a passive government. It waits for things to come to it and then it responds. And one of the models that we could use here is Peter Lougheed in Alberta. Peter Lougheed used public ownership.
Markham:He built the the Alberta Energy Company, which is basically, long story short, helped to found the petrochemical industry in in Alberta. He funded AOSTRA, which developed the SAGD technology, which is the basis for the oil sands. He did a number of things. He set up the Heritage Fund, set up all of these things. And he said one time, I am not a we're not conservatives.
Markham:We're an activist government who wants to get things done. And we've forgotten what activist government looks like. The BC NDP are not activists. The federal Liberals are not activists. They don't create crown corporations and go and develop a sector like the Chinese did or like Peter Lawy did.
Markham:And we need to rediscover our Canadian roots, the things that made us very good 40, 50, 60 years ago. And it's from people like Gordon, Adam Walker here who need to pick up those ideas and take them some play and talk about them. Talk about them in committee. Talk about them in the media when they get the opportunity. Invite people like me and Sandy to go and.
Markham:But also and sorry, this is one of the reasons why I interrupted you, Sandy. We at Energy Media, we start I started doing presentations and lunch and learns on the energy transition about a year ago, and I would do an event like this. And invariably, somebody would stand up and say, Markham, I get it. You know, you've laid out the the argument for the energy transition and all of this. I see that.
Markham:It accords with what I see in the world. What do I do? And I had no as a journalist, I had I had no response to them. This is not my job to be an activist. I heard it so many times.
Markham:I got sick of hearing it. And so we created energy the energy circles. And we would invite you, all of you, any of you to join our energy circle and get involved with the campaigns that we're we're helping Roy with the Sous Big Oil campaign. We're we're working on the Western Grid initiative. We'll have other campaigns around clean energy that you can get involved in.
Markham:You can write letters. You can go come to events. You can hold rallies. You can, I mean, this is a chance for you to not only get involved, but to be active, to lead if you choose that to do that? So please, there's a there's a, paper at the back.
Markham:And if you would sign that and and give us some of your information, we'll get in touch with you about how you can join the energy circle with help out Roy, help out me to effect change that Sandy and I have been talking about, but how to do it is a very difficult thing. So if we can get people involved to have conversations and act, that's at least the start. How about q and a now?
Speaker 7:Okay.
Markham:Can we get can somebody who would like to ask the first question? Yes, ma'am.
Speaker 8:Nuclear energy.
Markham:Okay. That's a statement, not a question, but I think we we can tackle it.
Speaker 8:You mentioned CRNL, Top River Nuclear Laboratories.
Markham:Nope. Canadian Natural Resources Limited. It's Canada's biggest, oil and gas company.
Speaker 8:Okay. I thought it was CRNL. We were talking about, nuclear energy, and I know they're saying a large percentage of of our energy comes from nuclear. What about the the leftovers? The
Markham:The spent fuel?
Speaker 8:The spent fuel and we're bearing I worked at Chalk River many many years ago. And, it's a disaster out there. So how do you feel about that? Is is that is that still in the future? Because I know Canada was a leader many decades ago about establishing, nuclear facilities in India and other places.
Speaker 8:Scientists from here would go over there.
Markham:Right.
Speaker 8:And now they have the knowledge. They don't need us anymore.
Markham:Sandy, you wanna I have
Sandy:zero expertise on the current state of nuclear. I I mentioned it because just because it's pretty dramatic with that China is doing it, and I think it's part of a commitment to move away from move away from fossil fuels. I believe that the sector has transformed significantly from its from its early days and there's an awful lot of nuclear power that's being generated around the world very safely. But I'm not taking a position pro or against what I do think is that wind and solar are having such dramatic increases as that and at such reduced costs that the the nuclear question may may just disappear on its own, under under the under the pressure of solar and wind.
Markham:Yeah. I would have to agree with that. And generally, what where you get the pressure for nuclear, particularly in the form of small modular reactors, is from those people who are fearful of change. Because what they want is they say, okay. We gotta get rid of gas.
Markham:We have to get rid of coal. We acknowledge that. What we want is a drop in replacement for those. Because right now, what we have is the big hub and spoke model. Right?
Markham:I mean, we have this in DC. We have one utility in Fortis a little bit, 10% or something. But mostly, it's BC Hydro. You got you've got one company that's responsible for generation, transmission, distribution, and retail. And they like that system, and they want it they want to keep it the same way.
Markham:And so they want if you're going to take coal out, pop in a nuclear plant. You're going to take gas out, pop in a nuclear plant. The problem with that is that clean when once you get into what are called inverter based resources, which are like wind and solar, they're variable, they're in intermittent, is you have to begin reengineering your grid. And we haven't talked about this, but there is a wave of technological change happening in the in the utility industry. Everybody knows it.
Markham:When I talked to when I interviewed Adaraman from ASO last week, I mean, he acknowledged that that there there is storage and and power electronics and, demand response, on and on and on. There's dozens of different technologies now that weren't available 10 years ago, And those alone are creating pressure to transform the grids. And so now, when you have intermittent resources, now you have tools that you can employ on your grid that allow you to deal with that. Now maybe, down in the US, we can't don't do this in Canada. But down in the US, what they'll do is they'll trade electricity from region to region to region because it's market based there.
Markham:And they so they can do that. In California, I interviewed a a young woman whose business is to transform multifamily apartments, and they turn them into virtual power plants. So that when the utility sends a signal to them, they control the HVAC system in every unit in that in that apartment building, and they can turn it up or down. They can turn the washing machine off. They can do all all of that.
Markham:So to lessen the strain on the grid. All of these tools are coming. Virtual power plants. You got a 100 rooftop a lot 100 homes with rooftop solar. The aggregator, the virtual power plant, gets you all together and and gets you onto a system where they control when that power that you've stored in the batteries is sold into the grid, so you make more money.
Markham:They make money, you make more money, pay for your system. There and I've I've given you 2 or 3 and there are literally dozens and dozens and dozens of these things. And part of the problem we have in Canada is we're we're behind. We're so far behind. And it was I used to complain about BC Hydro before they brought out their capital plan 2 months ago and say, good lord, man.
Markham:Don't you guys know we're in the middle of a technological revolution? Like, why isn't the utility at the forefront of this, talking and talking to British Columbians and ratepayers and explaining how this technology is going to work? Roy and his 6 of his pea 6 of his neighbors, have EVs and they go to charge them at the same time and blow us the transformer. Those are silly things, but that's what happens when you don't plan for this. And we've done a very poor job here.
Markham:So I'm with Sandy. I I think that wind and solar with a reengineered grid and and make take making taking advantage of hydro will make it. Yes, sir.
Speaker 3:So one of the things we haven't mentioned is the changing economy to scale between industrial energy project like site c that are massive capital projects versus microgeneration from solar panels on your roof. From storing electricity in your car and putting it back in the house when your house when the grid goes down. That's gonna have a huge impact.
Markham:Yes. Well, actually, Sandy did because she mentioned the rooftop solar in China. And you certainly see that in the US with, with virtual power plants. That's exactly what kind of what that is. And now you're you've mentioned, the vehicle to grid integration.
Markham:Right. Right.
Speaker 3:It's a change in in the the model from industrial. Right. K o production of energy, simply produced, distributed using
Sandy:Yep.
Speaker 3:Power grids to much locally produced, cheaper forms renewable renewable energy.
Markham:Yes. That's exactly right. You've got it, sir. That is absolutely true. And did you know here that in the Nanaimo Regional District, we are currently consulting over a local clean energy plan?
Speaker 6:No.
Markham:Who knew that? Any of our, counselors know that? Really? Counselors knew it. I ran into the mayor a couple of years ago.
Markham:I interviewed him about it and he mentioned offhand, and so I've been trying to set up interview. I can't get an interview with anybody. Nobody wants to talk to the media about it. This is a great example of how a community on a you know, we're disconnected from the main grid, could put in community solar, could put in rooftop solar. What options have we got here?
Markham:Geothermal maybe. Who knows?
Sandy:And that's an and that's another part of this story that I know interest you, Markham, is is, the collapse of our journalism industry and the fact that we don't have local, we don't have local reporting, we don't have regional or even national reporting when you were we we had talks before before today about, you know, where is the energy media and where is the media on a lot of these stories. Well, well, half of them are doing DoorDash and Uber in their spare time. There's the the there's a complete collapse, in the sector, and we do not have anywhere near the reporting and journalism capacity that we used to have that would have been reporting these stories. And it isn't even that nobody's interested. I think people are very interested, and I think even journalists are interested, but they have to meet they have to meet deadlines or they have to they have to meet certain, shrinking shrinking requirements.
Sandy:I mean, it's it's actually yet another area of really severe concern, just for our national discourse.
Markham:Sandy, how many, energy journalists do you think there are in Canada now?
Sandy:Maybe 10. I haven't got a clue.
Markham:10 or 15 for the whole country? Mhmm. In the midst of an energy transition?
Sandy:Mhmm.
Markham:That's insane.
Speaker 5:Mhmm.
Markham:And and, my wife and I, we've sustained our we're in our 16th year now. We had to sustain ourselves, you know, we had some pretty lean years. There's no way to fund it. There's no way to earn money on it.
Speaker 4:Mhmm. If it
Markham:they had it
Sandy:And and this information, this is absolutely essential to our democratic institutions and and to our future and to our economic well-being in the future.
Markham:I I guess we should put a a plug in here for the National Observer because, Linda. Linda, Solomon Wood has done a really bang up job in a lot of these issues and and deserves, I think, a shout out for that.
Sandy:She sure she sure does. She's done a tremendous job. And how are we doing?
Speaker 5:Oh, fine. I just gotta weigh in just on this journalism thing. National Observer, Heidi, Narwhal, Guardian, Clean Tactica that's free. But most of those are they call them independent journalists, but they're actual journalists. And they they have good writers doing lots of research, and they need your money.
Speaker 5:Mhmm. These I subscribe to all of the above. Mhmm. It's it's well worth it. And it's a way as we were talking with court, it's a way to support the good people like us.
Speaker 5:Mhmm. Because you can if you if you're a subscriber to most of those publications, you're free to send any article to people who you think might benefit from reading them. Now whether they read them or not, I don't know. But there's there's we should that's put that down. I'll put it down on our to do list.
Speaker 5:Independent journalists, and we can put that up on your website.
Markham:Whatever the number is, there's not many of us.
Speaker 5:No. But support gets there.
Speaker 8:In all of your discussions with governments and industry, have you heard anything about the idea of establishing a public electric utility company, a national one or provincial ones? I know they're doing that in New Zealand or Australia so that you have a situation where the government can have more liberty, I suppose, to drive some new initiatives Mhmm. When it's actually a publicly owned utility supported by the public?
Markham:You wanna take that one?
Sandy:I don't. I've got I know I can think of one lawyer in this audience that would probably have some, edifying comments about the constitutional issues about a national, utility. I think that it's probably provincial, jurisdiction, and I think it'd be but, but I'm not sure.
Markham:I I'll tell you one thing. There's the race going on right now for the NDP leadership in Alberta. There are 5 people. 1 just dropped out. And I happen to know one of them, Gil McGowan, and he is the only one who has put that option on the tip.
Markham:It's not a federal, but in Alberta, he wants to have a crown Alberta owned Crown Corporation to reregulate the electricity system. And I know one of the people that I interviewed, Dave Gray, who's an energy economist, has argued for a federal crown corporation that can kind of be overlaid on this western grid, and it can actually buy from the the generators, the solar farms and so on, and then sell it on those new inner east west intertines. So have I heard? Yes. But those are coming from independent people, from
Speaker 9:Actually, my question is with regard to the Western Canada Energy platform. You know, it's gonna be cleaner, cheaper, blindingly obvious, as you're starting to elude, it's gonna be the it is because Canada is constitutionally balkanized for power. It needs the some sort of on the federal side. Federal people won't talk about that.
Markham:That'd be cool.
Speaker 9:But, yeah, talk about how we how we get that, for the the common good
Speaker 5:as
Speaker 9:opposed to keeping private corporations in different provinces well funded.
Markham:Mhmm. One thing I can tell you, the reason why the the Western Canadian grid idea is not new. It's been kicking around for decades. The reason it doesn't get advanced, I'm told, is politics. The BC government doesn't wanna talk to the Alberta government because they're having a fight over the trans mountain expansion and there's a wine war on and then there's some legislation out of Alberta so they can stop sending oil to these are the kinds of things that consume us instead of doing the nation building things that we need to do.
Speaker 9:But to that point, we had the Canadian Energy Regulator and the Federal Government cross provincial boundaries to get TMX plugged in
Speaker 5:for the Canadian good.
Sandy:Yep. Right? National interest.
Speaker 9:Right? And that's how it has
Markham:to be sold. In order
Speaker 9:in order to make these 4 provinces, then Ontario would have to talk to Quebec Eastern Canada will have to talk to Quebec about making that all work. But, I mean, that's the sort of level it has to be driven to. And, again, many federal politicians wanna dig in there, please.
Speaker 7:You're the one. Picky down there.
Markham:There they I I actually reported on, the TMX conflict between the National Energy Board and City of Burnaby and BC government after the NDP were elected in 2017. It's a dog's breakfast. So we're not gonna go there. We'll leave that for another event where we can dig into it into great detail. Nevertheless, the federal government needs to show much more leadership around this.
Markham:The provincial government I mean, and this is not a bet. On climate and energy, I give the the BC NDP, at least a b. They're not an a plus. They're not an a and they're not an a plus, but they get a solid b for what they've done so far. There's so much more that could be done.
Markham:Gord.
Speaker 10:Yeah. Just a couple of comments. Just in terms of home energy, Alan, Lalout, and there's people here. We had the greener homes for that. It was fabulous.
Speaker 10:People subscribed to it. And there was huge bureaucratic delays in getting people money. Secondly, they ran out of money a couple months ago. And so here's a great program. Pickup was enormous from, people in the community to do the right thing.
Speaker 10:And incentives were there. This is the kind of programs we need to continue to fund and make sure that we have enough revenue to meet all of the needs. But in terms of the political climate and what you're talking about, energy grid, a national energy grid, something we've been promoting. And, you know, we've done that kind of together with Labour and the Sustainable Jobs Act, which Gill McGowan was like absolutely huge with the Alberta Federation of Labour in terms of their support. But the problem is back to politics.
Speaker 10:You've got a premier in Alberta that put a stop to all clean energy, literally 1,000,000,000 of dollars on hold. Right? And now they've made announcements, I think today or yesterday, that they're gonna make it very, very difficult to invest in that promise in clean energy. And I think BC is absolutely way more open. We loan them energy, as you know, through some of the cold temperatures that they saw this winter.
Speaker 10:But I think we really need everybody, Labour especially, to put more pressure on the premiers to work collaboratively to get there. But the politics is the problem. This is this is why I started off the meeting about the politics. Because if we can actually get the politics out of the way, listen to the experts and move forward, we're on our way and we're gonna do really well. That's the biggest barrier right now is politics.
Markham:I wanna make a point that we often talk about in the energy circle, and God help me, I'm gonna quote Ralph Klein. It doesn't happen very often, but this is the one exception that I made. Klein used to say, I'm the lead. I find a parade and I get out in front of it. And if we can create the parade, and the energy circle can be one of the parts of the parade, but if we can create a parade of engaged active citizens, we can put the pressure on those politicians that Gord was talking about, and maybe we will see change.
Markham:As long as we're passive and just complacent, none of that's gonna happen. Sandy?
Sandy:Vern has a question.
Speaker 4:One quick comment and a question to Sandy. My comment is that if anybody questions the need for industrial strategy right now, just ask them to them to explain how the CPR got built.
Markham:They literally called it the national policy.
Speaker 4:But my question to Sandy directly is when are we going to see a $20,000 EP on a lot in Calgary? Because that's gonna be the game changer.
Sandy:Yes. It is. It's it's really interesting. I was, listening to a podcast, just today, plain English. Derek Thompson had and I forget the name of the guest.
Sandy:Phenomenal interview just out in the last couple of days about, EVs and about about power. And he was making the point that and this I don't even know if it's going to be seeing an EV on the street in Calgary. Although, some of those little Chinese cars are so adorable, like, they're just they're just so sweet.
Markham:The ones that are made for teenage girls?
Sandy:The ones that are made for teenage girls, the ice cream cherry. Go Google it and see what it's it's just adorable. These I mean and it sells for under $5,000 in China. But, this person today was making the point that the the barrel of the gun that the the American Automotive sector is staring down is that 90% of their revenues, they used to ship worldwide, they still ship worldwide, But, so 50% of their product goes overseas. They do have they are losing money right now on their EVs.
Sandy:They got way out over their skis trying to forward with the, with the f 150 lightning with trying to electrify trucks, But 90% of their of their margin, of their revenue comes from margin from these huge, big, gas guzzling trucks and SUVs. And that's what their market is, but that is a shrinking market. By the way, when the media is giving this narrative, and I hate to sort of blame the media, but there is a groupthink that happens. And I think this is part of the function of a shrinking, journalism industry, is that the groupthink is really, really strong. So right now, the groupthink is that, oh, we're not selling EVs.
Sandy:Nobody wants to buy EVs. Actually, EV sales grew 30% year over year in 2023. They're not growing at the rate that people want to see them grow to be meeting our 2030 commitments. That's the biggest problem. But the bigger problem from an economic and industry point of view is that the ICE, internal combustion engine vehicles, have absolutely stalled out.
Sandy:There is no growth happening in that sector. They are not selling. And the margins, because the market for the large American those big trucks, it's shrinking. It's holding steady in the United States. It's kind of an and in in rural areas, we're seeing a lot of it in Canada, but there's no other money coming in.
Sandy:That's all it is, and it's not growing. Meanwhile, they are having to put out all of this money to build out these EVs that they're going to have to produce to meet, requirements. They're they're really they're really in trouble, and that's a good podcast that I would I would, recommend people have a listen to.
Speaker 9:To that point, peak internal combustion engine production on the planet was in 2017.
Sandy:Mhmm. Yep.
Speaker 9:90 5, 96,000,000 vehicles. That was the first year we hit 1,000,000 EVs. Last year, 14,000,000 EVs and somewhere around 73,000,000 ICE vehicles. So we're down about 30% since 2017. That is that's straight out there.
Speaker 9:Ford and GM, twenty 16 between the 2 of them, GM built 10,000,000, Ford built 6,000,000. Last year, GM built, 6. Yeah. Built 6 or no. Built.
Speaker 9:Yeah. Built 6, and, Ford built 4.
Sandy:And and when the and when when the much less expensive cars start coming on stream, when they start eating market share all over the rest of the world for these large manufacturers. And then Americans are gonna be starting, when can we get a $5,000 car? Can I have a $5,000 car? When can I have they'll start to be demand for it? That's going to be a huge
Markham:problem. One of the things that you need to understand is is how rapidly battery technology is changing. So right now, a battery is a $137 a kilowatt hour. And it needs the forecast is that by 2030, it'll be down around $50 or $60. And a battery is 25 to 35% of the value of an electric vehicle.
Markham:But at the the same time, now here's the cool thing about and this is the secret sauce to the clean to the energy transition. There is a fundamental difference between energy as a technology and energy as a commodity. And and I just if you will go to our podcast, doctor Duane Farmer of Oxford explained complexity theory and the energy transition. And he said the theory proves that in when you begin manufacturing energy technology in a factory, costs go down exponentially on a regular basis. It's called Wright's Law.
Markham:Efficiency goes up all the time. Energy density and batteries rise at 7% on average a year. Do the math and it's not long before those batteries will be cheap enough and powerful enough that you we will have a $20,000 electric vehicle someplace. In Calgary. Yeah.
Markham:In Calgary. On a Calgary street. That's where we're going.
Speaker 7:There's so much misinformation as to the sourcing of materials for this. I mean, the media stuff and the stuff that even little ladies in Parksville are coming out with is,
Sandy:I don't know, where are you getting
Speaker 7:this stuff. But
Markham:Facebook memes. They get it from a meme.
Speaker 7:This is it. But, you know, this is what we're having to deal with, you know, some Let's
Markham:do one more. Join join our energy circle. We'll help you out.
Speaker 6:I will try.
Sandy:Let's do one more question.
Markham:One more question? Yes, sir.
Speaker 10:I'd like to
Speaker 6:poke a little bit on China if I could. That'd be Sandy. And, I I see their intellectual capital building, and ours has built historically
Markham:Mhmm.
Speaker 6:And Europe has as well. And I'm wondering what your thoughts are on whether we can compete at that level if we want to.
Sandy:I'm not sure that I don't have I don't think there's any question that we can compete on the intellectual level. The question is, I don't think that we should be I'm kind of a blue ocean strategy person. I don't think that we should be trying to go head to head against the Chinese at with a, a sector that they have absolutely mastered because we're not going we don't have first of all, we don't have anywhere near the economies of scale. I mean, we're we're not even the whole country is barely the size of a medium city in China. So they can they can capture a certain degree of scale, that's impossible for us.
Sandy:But at the same time, if you look at a country like Taiwan, there's there's Taiwan in comparable population to Canada, And there, they brought in Morris Chang and built TSMC. But, again, he was taking advantage of, in a sense, a particular skill that he knew that Taiwan there was a good match. What I think we need to look for is what can we be good at? I mean, we do have certain things that we are a superpower at. I know that internationally people are wondering, are we hoarding our potash?
Sandy:Are we not? Why are we not? Like, the we we are, whether we like it or not, we are a resource economy. We're a resource rich country. There are things that we can do, and maybe that's what we should be looking at, what we are good at and what we have.
Speaker 3:I wanna tell you a story.
Markham:So in, September, the World Petroleum Congress was held in Calgary. I spent 3 days reporting there. And I'm walking along, you know, it's a trade show, right? So I'm walking along looking for stories to do and I see one on materials. I think, well, this is great.
Markham:I've done a lot of work on materials. I go in. There's 4 people on the stage. One who's moderating is doctor Ibrahim Abba, who's the VP of Technology for Saudi Aramco, one of the world's biggest oil companies. Right?
Markham:On and he says, in his address, he says, oh, yeah. We're having an energy transition, but what you don't know and understand is we're having a materials transition. We are learning to make materials out of hydrocarbons and other things that we've never done before. And we have to do this because people are we're gonna you know, population is going blah blah blah. On so we this is about, making materials from hydrocarbons.
Markham:The 3 gentlemen on the stage, who are they? One is doctor Abba's chief scientist, so it's great, expected. Another one is a Chinese gentleman whose name I didn't get. Who's the third one? Doctor Paulo Bombin from Alberta Innovates.
Markham:In 2016, Alberta Innovates began a pro the research to turn bitumen into carbon fiber, an asphalt binder and other stuff, but carbon fiber is the big one. And the reason is, a hydrocarbon goes like this. That's what the molecule looks like. A bitumen molecule is a sheet. It's a sheet of carbon and hydrogen atoms.
Markham:And when it's a sheet, a chemist can make something else out of it. They can manipulate it. So they are about a year, a year and a half away from having a commercial process that will turn bitumen into into carbon fiber precursor. Right? Then you turn it, take it to a carbon fiber manufacturing plant.
Markham:So I I phoned up Alex Walk, who's, vice president at at Zoltek Manufacturing in Saint Louis, Missouri, and I said, Alex, you guys make carbon fiber. Would you build a plant, a carbon fiber plant in Alberta, if you could get cheap carbon fiber precursor? He said, Marco, of course, we do. We put the plant next to the precursor. That's the industry.
Markham:Right? Alberta Innovates owns that IP. And you know what Paulo said to me in an interview? He said, we lead the world in this right now. All it takes is Saudi Arabia or the United States to decide to throw 1,000,000,000 of dollars at it, and we've lost our advantage.
Markham:If there was ever a time so at the World Petroleum Congress, I interviewed, Premier Smith, and I asked her about this. I said, is there a plan b? Come on. I mean, you know, what are you gonna do if things turn out don't turn out the way you plan? She says, oh, well, if it if it's that bad, we'll make something with it.
Markham:This is the problem. It's not a strategy. It's planning for the best and don't care about the worst. What did mom tell us? Hope for the best, plan for the worst.
Markham:That's not what we're doing. Alberta is going to throw that opportunity away and we're gonna make I'm gonna cry one of you because they could have a world class carbon fiber industry there and they could pivot their oil sands from making fuel, feedstock for fuel, to feedstock for materials. You don't have to burn it anymore. This is the stuff if you look around the our economies, there's plenty of opportunities like that and they go unexploited because we're just not set up for it.
Speaker 6:May I ask one more or who has the contract?
Markham:Sandy, it's up to you. You're the one who
Sandy:One more. And then but then and then we can do questions after.
Speaker 6:Alright. It's, political systems. We have a system here. There's a system in front of the US. There's a system in China and Taiwan, and every country's got a system of sorts.
Speaker 6:Do you see our and I'm not being critical of our system, but do you see our system just being friction to the process that you're describing, the evolution?
Sandy:Do you see do I see our system being System system being a
Speaker 6:friction because we're slowing the
Sandy:system down. Well, I I I think that I think that don't you think that the discourse that we've got trapped into, and I think social media has been a big part of this, is this the constant, yes, we can, no, you can't, you know, the the constant push me, pull you and the and and the the, you know, getting caught in the distraction about what's such a minor minor what should be a minor issue, like the carbon tax. And I just think that but we our culture has got caught in that. And we've been, you know, we've been addicted by social media into in in and trapped in that, and it has taken over how I think a lot of journalists address issues, and I think politicians are stuck in it. It's, I'm I would like to be hopeful that we're somehow going to get better at it.
Sandy:And and maybe we will because maybe maybe people will will start to just say enough about that. I always look just to close off with where we started, you know, on the issue about the carbon tax. And this is where I I have just decided I'm not gonna fight with deniers anymore about what is the science. But just try and find something that I mean, most people do understand insurance. They do understand risk.
Sandy:And I to go back again to that, I just say we've been listening to the oil and gas industry. We haven't listened to the insurance industry. They've been telling us loud and clear for decades about this, But instead, we've kind of got trapped into all the environmental activists say, and then there's the business sector says as if the business and the activists are are enemies in some way and not just different perspectives as
Markham:I do actually have a perspective on this. So who here knows, Brett Wilson? He used to be on the Dragon's Den and, you know, oil guy. Right? Brett is the biggest fiver on social media.
Markham:The guy lies through his teeth. He lies about me. Brett and I have butted heads for years. And the reason is he has he's worth $300,000,000 He's heavily invested in his through his companies through the oil and gas industry, and he goes on social media and spreads misinformation with memes and tweets and what have you to and he does it very deliberately to confuse the conversation just like Sandy said. Now that's one little example.
Markham:The oil and gas, we have an incumbency problem. We have an incumbency problem. We have big companies that, that are that have way too much power in our economy. And in Canada you know, Alberta's the oil and gas industry. It's It's also in the utility industry.
Markham:I would even argue some crowns fall into this category. And it they have when their business model is disrupted, they have 3 choices. They either have a new business model, they reengineer their old business model, or they double down on their status quo. And when they double down on their status quo because they don't see a pivot, the first thing they do is go capture the politicians and they send do this now in the modern world. They send out these misinformation campaigns like CAP and all of those associations, and they, you know, they twist the truth, and they and and it and then there's it confuses the conversation.
Markham:And I'm we get into this kind of thing where we're butting heads. We're arguing over the wrong issues. Why are we how why are we doing that? Because Pierre Poliyev has axed the tax program. Where does money from Pierre Poliyev come from?
Markham:Calgary. That's that's part of the problem. It's the root of this thing is in the incumbents, in my opinion. Gord, do you were gonna Yeah.
Speaker 10:I just wanna say it's so great, the conversation. I wanna thank you. It's so forward thinking. That's what we need right now. I I just you know, when I talked about the carbon tax, I'm just saying we can't ignore it.
Speaker 10:It's impossible to have the conversation. Like, it is it is consuming people. We live in rural Canada. I tell you, rural Canada, it is taking off this this conversation. It is taking hold, and we can't ignore.
Speaker 10:We have got to push back with facts, with evidence, and get people back to this conversation. Because this is the conversation we need to have. This is what's critical to our youth and their future. And we owe it to them, Right? And you have such great ideas and the opportunities that came from the audience, I'm super impressed.
Speaker 10:And it gives me inspiration. But we have have to put this conversation to bed. It's going to take everybody rising up and say, no, we've had enough. But if we think we can ignore it in rural Canada, good luck. It's not going to work.
Speaker 10:Because I tell you, I have 400 emails over the weekend on this. I can't walk down the street. I can't go to the pool. I had people threatening me. I had a a protest at a disability tax workshop.
Speaker 10:So it's getting out of control just in the last few days. And Pierre Polley has done his axe the tax tour finale in Nanaimo on April 1st. So this is ramping up. It's not going away. We can fight back with opportunities and education and making sure that everybody's involved.
Speaker 10:But we need everybody to talk about it and talk about the reality of this is a diversion.
Markham:Gorda, I I can't speak for Sandy, but I speak for myself and for our company, all 3 of us, and Roy, the energy circle. We put those together to do exactly that thing. Exactly that thing. So if we can as I would urge as many of you as want to and can, join the the energy circle so that we can start doing what Gord said, education, conversation, activism, get out and do things. And Gord, I'm available all the time for a webinar, for in person presentation, whatever you need.
Markham:If that's what you wanna do, I mean, get me in front of get me in front of the Bubba's. Bubba's are my specialty. I I take Bubba's apart limb from limb. Happy to do engage that conversation.
Speaker 4:We're gonna do that. Okay. Good.
Sandy:Should we drop?
Markham:Yes. Sandy, thank you very much. Much.
Sandy:You've been
Markham:very gracious while we've been nattering on here. Thank you very much for this.