This is a con­ver­sa­tion about high-effi­cien­cy and renew­able ener­gy homes, focus­ing on prac­ti­cal steps home­own­ers can take, both when build­ing new and retro­fitting exist­ing prop­er­ties. Michel details his jour­ney towards sus­tain­able liv­ing in 2004, dri­ven by con­cerns about their envi­ron­men­tal foot­print and fos­sil fuel con­sump­tion. They first built a 2700 sq ft R2000 home with geot­her­mal heat­ing and cool­ing. This sys­tem worked well for 14 – 15 years, pro­vid­ing excel­lent tem­per­a­ture con­trol and elim­i­nat­ing their reliance on nat­ur­al gas. After mov­ing, they pur­chased a lot with a 111-year-old duplex and decid­ed to build a new, small­er home (close to 2000 sq ft includ­ing a granny suite). Inspired by pas­sive house prin­ci­ples, they opt­ed for a ​“near pas­sive” design to bal­ance cost and ben­e­fit. Key Fea­tures include triple-glazed win­dows, 18-inch-thick walls with R78 dense-packed cel­lu­lose insu­la­tion, R100+ insu­la­tion in the ceil­ing and roof, sep­a­rate air-source heat pumps for the main house and granny suite, high-effi­cien­cy hot water tank, and 18 solar pan­els on the roof (grid-tied). Michel reports sig­nif­i­cant­ly low­er ener­gy bills in the new home com­pared to their pre­vi­ous R2000 house. They even had a cred­it with Man­i­to­ba Hydro dur­ing the sum­mer due to solar pro­duc­tion. Dr. Renew­able empha­sizes the impor­tance of self-gen­er­at­ing renew­able ener­gy, even in provinces with a high pro­por­tion of hydro­elec­tric­i­ty, to dis­place coal use in oth­er juris­dic­tions and reduce the strain on util­i­ty infra­struc­ture. He reit­er­ates THE RED CUP con­cept: address­ing needs (heat, elec­tric­i­ty, trans­port) with renew­able ener­gy, effi­cien­cy, demand reduc­tion, and con­sid­er­ing scale (peo­ple, com­mu­ni­ty, util­i­ty). Michel’s home exem­pli­fies the ​“peo­ple” scale of THE RED CUP. The con­ver­sa­tion touch­es on the non-finan­cial ben­e­fits of liv­ing in a high-effi­cien­cy, sus­tain­able home, such as increased com­fort, quiet­ness, and peace of mind. Michel sug­gests that builders could eas­i­ly improve ener­gy effi­cien­cy by adding an inch of exte­ri­or insu­la­tion and reduc­ing ther­mal bridging.

The Cana­di­an Nation­al Elec­tri­fi­ca­tion Assess­ment Report ana­lyzes Canada’s cur­rent state of elec­tri­fi­ca­tion and its poten­tial for fur­ther elec­tri­fi­ca­tion across var­i­ous sec­tors (trans­porta­tion, build­ings, indus­try, and pow­er gen­er­a­tion) by 2050. The report projects that ener­gy effi­cien­cy, struc­tur­al changes, and fuel switch­ing could reduce econ­o­my-wide CO2 emis­sions by 47 – 80% by 2050. Achiev­ing net-zero will require addi­tion­al mea­sures like car­bon removal, low-car­bon fuels, and demand-side approach­es. Man­i­to­ba Hydro col­lab­o­rates with EPRI and is involved in dis­cus­sions about car­bon seques­tra­tion tech­nolo­gies. The report iden­ti­fies trans­porta­tion and indus­try as hav­ing the great­est poten­tial for emis­sions reduc­tions through elec­tri­fi­ca­tion. Trans­porta­tion accounts for about 25% of Canada’s emis­sions, and elec­tri­fi­ca­tion could reduce its emis­sions by up to 95%. Indus­try accounts for over 40% of nation­al emis­sions, and elec­tri­fi­ca­tion could reduce its emis­sions by up to 30%. Build­ings (13% of emis­sions) and pow­er gen­er­a­tion (12%) also offer oppor­tu­ni­ties for reduc­tion through elec­tri­fi­ca­tion and oth­er mea­sures. Inte­grat­ing large amounts of renew­able ener­gy into the grid presents tech­ni­cal chal­lenges due to the vari­abil­i­ty and uncer­tain­ty of wind and solar pow­er. This requires man­ag­ing sup­ply and demand, main­tain­ing grid sta­bil­i­ty, and poten­tial­ly using bat­tery stor­age. Elec­tri­fi­ca­tion also changes elec­tric­i­ty demand pat­terns, with increased win­ter peaks due to elec­tric heat­ing and EV charg­ing. New pow­er sup­ply requires sig­nif­i­cant upfront invest­ment in infra­struc­ture. This could be a bar­ri­er for low-income house­holds, requir­ing tar­get­ed incen­tives and financ­ing. The high upfront costs of green tech­nolo­gies, cou­pled with poten­tial­ly high­er inter­est rates, could lead to elec­tric­i­ty rate increas­es. Dr. Renew­able points out that 9 tril­lion dol­lars are spent annu­al­ly on fos­sil fuels (fuel val­ue, sub­si­dies, envi­ron­men­tal dam­age), a non-recov­er­able cost. He con­trasts this with the invest­ment need­ed for renew­able ener­gy tran­si­tion, which he esti­mates at 2 tril­lion per year, argu­ing that the lat­ter is a much more sus­tain­able and cost-effec­tive approach. The fed­er­al gov­ern­ment has announced plans to dou­ble elec­tric­i­ty capac­i­ty by 2050, while the report sug­gests a 50% increase. As for the coal para­dox, Dr. Renew­able rais­es a crit­i­cal ques­tion: why invest in car­bon cap­ture while glob­al coal con­sump­tion is still increas­ing for coal pow­er plants? He argues that this is like try­ing to plug holes in a sink­ing ship while oth­ers are mak­ing more holes, result­ing in a net loss. He ques­tions the log­ic of util­i­ties using elec­tric­i­ty to cap­ture car­bon when that same elec­tric­i­ty could be used to dis­place fos­sil fuels directly.

The con­ver­sa­tion cen­ters around Bill Gates’s $40 mil­lion invest­ment in a DAC project in Cana­da. Dr. Renew­able argues that DAC is not cost-effec­tive and won’t make a sig­nif­i­cant dent in atmos­pher­ic car­bon. He sug­gests the atten­tion would be bet­ter spent on renew­able, effi­cien­cy and demand projects. Eric explains the core issue with DAC: cap­tur­ing CO2 from the atmos­phere is more dif­fi­cult and ener­gy inten­sive because of very low con­cen­tra­tions — 420 parts per mil­lion. He uses an anal­o­gy of try­ing to address a small amount of diesel spilled in a large lake when peo­ple are still spilling lots of diesel into the lake at the same time. He also points out the hypocrisy of DAC while allow­ing con­tin­ued emis­sions from coal plants. Dr. Renew­able pro­pos­es that Bill Gates’s is engag­ing in ven­ture cap­i­tal tac­tics, invest­ing ear­ly in a com­pa­ny to then sell his shares for a prof­it, regard­less of the tech­nol­o­gy’s actu­al effec­tive­ness. Ear­ly ven­ture cap­i­tal investors refer to the next round of investors as ​“sheep” who are enam­ored by the ini­tial invest­ment into a tech­nol­o­gy and see it as ​“vet­ted”. Dr. Renew­able presents cal­cu­la­tions show­ing the cost of cap­tur­ing all year­ly CO2 emis­sions from coal-fired pow­er plants using DAC. He esti­mates DAC costs lev­el­ing out at approx­i­mate­ly $350 per ton of CO2, result­ing in a total cost of $13 tril­lion a year — a fig­ure dwarf­ing the glob­al ener­gy mar­ket. He argues that this makes DAC eco­nom­i­cal­ly unfea­si­ble com­pared to using 1 out of 10,000 pho­tons we get from the sun. Bill Gates is essen­tial­ly con­tribut­ing to an ​“apartheid against renew­ables” by pro­mot­ing a flawed approach. Eric also rais­es con­cerns about the embed­ded car­bon emis­sions asso­ci­at­ed with build­ing DAC plants (steel, man­u­fac­tur­ing, etc.) and the ener­gy required to oper­ate them. He high­lights the ten­den­cy to focus on spe­cif­ic envi­ron­men­tal prob­lems like min­ing elec­tric car bat­ter­ies while ignor­ing the larg­er issue of fos­sil fuel low­er­ing their over­all ener­gy effi­cien­cy to look like they are doing some­thing. Robert acknowl­edges that DAC sounds appeal­ing to the pub­lic because it offers a seem­ing­ly sim­ple tech­no­log­i­cal fix. They argue that renew­able ener­gy advo­cates need to become bet­ter at com­mu­ni­cat­ing the ben­e­fits of their solu­tions in a sim­i­lar­ly com­pelling way. Dr. Renew­able advo­cates for a direct approach: shut­ting down coal plants and invest­ing direct­ly in renew­able ener­gy infra­struc­ture. They believe this is a far more effi­cient and cost-effec­tive way to address cli­mate change than pur­su­ing tech­nolo­gies like DAC.

The hosts intro­duce Michael Daci, a busi­ness own­er in the solar ener­gy sec­tor with oper­a­tions across West­ern Cana­da. They dis­cuss solar ener­gy, its polit­i­cal con­text, includ­ing recent crit­i­cism of Alber­ta’s ener­gy poli­cies to add reg­u­la­tions to solar and wind. Michael and his busi­ness part­ner focus on diver­si­fy­ing their busi­ness across provinces in res­i­den­tial, com­mer­cial, agri­cul­tur­al to avoid over-reliance on spe­cif­ic rebate pro­grams. Alber­ta is shown as a leader in solar ener­gy in the Prairie provinces, despite its strong oil and gas indus­try. This is attrib­uted to good rebate pro­grams like the Com­mu­ni­ty Ener­gy Imple­men­ta­tion Pro­gram which allows solar financ­ing through prop­er­ty tax­es, offer­ing long-term sta­bil­i­ty even when rebates fluc­tu­ate. The cost of solar pan­els has sig­nif­i­cant­ly decreased, while their effi­cien­cy and size have increased. Now, the cost of labor exceeds the cost of the pan­els them­selves. The solar busi­ness is pri­mar­i­ly dri­ven by retro­fitting exist­ing homes rather than new con­struc­tions. His com­pa­ny is active­ly work­ing with First Nations com­mu­ni­ties on var­i­ous projects, includ­ing solar path light­ing and con­sult­ing. While Alber­ta had a mora­to­ri­um on renew­able ener­gy projects over one megawatt, it’s argued this was­n’t entire­ly neg­a­tive, as it encour­aged a more planned and strate­gic approach to grid inte­gra­tion of renew­ables. The long-term out­look for solar pow­er is pos­i­tive, with decreas­ing costs and increas­ing effi­cien­cy. This will even­tu­al­ly make it high­ly com­pet­i­tive with fos­sil fuels. The dis­cus­sion clar­i­fies that while Canada’s elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­a­tion is large­ly renew­able at 72%, the over­all renew­able ener­gy ratio (includ­ing trans­porta­tion and oth­er sec­tors) is around 19%. Poli­cies in Alber­ta to use fos­sil fuels to process fos­sil fuel wastes is neg­a­tive­ly impact­ing this ratio.

The con­ver­sa­tion cov­ers the use of renew­able ener­gy sources ver­sus fos­sil fuels. The key points are includ­ed that the sun pro­vides far more ener­gy than the world cur­rent­ly uses, but we are still heav­i­ly reliant on fos­sil fuels, which are waste­ful and con­tribute to cli­mate change. Peo­ple inter­viewed are con­cerned about the lack of aware­ness and action, espe­cial­ly among younger gen­er­a­tions, when it comes to tran­si­tion­ing to renew­able ener­gy sources. They rec­og­nize the need for more edu­ca­tion and infor­ma­tion to be made avail­able, as many peo­ple are not aware of the scale of the prob­lem and the solu­tions that are avail­able. Peo­ple being inter­viewed believe that there is hope and that humans have the capa­bil­i­ty to solve the cli­mate cri­sis, but it will require a col­lec­tive effort and a shift in mind­set from fear to opti­mism. They acknowl­edge the chal­lenges and empha­size the impor­tance of focus­ing on solu­tions and hav­ing faith in human­i­ty’s abil­i­ty to adapt and thrive. More­over, they cau­tion against encour­ag­ing too much self-fla­gel­la­tion or the idea that humans are inher­ent­ly bad for the envi­ron­ment. Instead, the focus should be on align­ing our val­ues and actions to take care of the envi­ron­ment. The younger gen­er­a­tions may not ful­ly grasp the long-term impacts of ris­ing CO2 lev­els, com­pared to more vis­i­ble issues like plas­tic pol­lu­tion. Over­all, the peo­ple inter­viewed believe a pos­i­tive, solu­tion-ori­ent­ed mind­set is impor­tant, espe­cial­ly for younger gen­er­a­tions fac­ing this challenge.

This dis­cus­sion explains how ​“flow-through shares” in Cana­da can be used to incen­tivize invest­ment in renew­able ener­gy projects, and his­tor­i­cal­ly, min­ing and oil & gas. Bruce Dug­gan clar­i­fies that this mech­a­nism allows com­pa­nies under­tak­ing high-risk, pre-prof­it activ­i­ties like explo­ration or research and devel­op­ment to pass on tax deduc­tions to investors. Ear­ly-stage renew­able ener­gy projects require sig­nif­i­cant upfront invest­ment before gen­er­at­ing rev­enue, mak­ing them risky for investors. Flow-Through shares can help a com­pa­ny under­tak­ing these activ­i­ties by issu­ing flow-through shares. When investors buy these shares, they gain the right to deduct the com­pa­ny’s eli­gi­ble expens­es like explo­ration or R&D from their own tax­able income. This ben­e­fits com­pa­nies to access fund­ing for high-risk, ear­ly-stage renew­able ener­gy projects by hav­ing investors gain sig­nif­i­cant tax deduc­tions, reduc­ing their over­all tax bur­den. For the Gov­ern­ment, this could encour­age invest­ment in renew­able ener­gy with­out direct spend­ing. This mech­a­nism has been used for decades in the min­ing sec­tor and was also used for oil and gas explo­ration until recent­ly. It is now being pro­mot­ed for renew­able ener­gy projects. The dis­cus­sion also touch­es on how flow-through shares can be com­bined with char­i­ta­ble dona­tions to max­i­mize tax ben­e­fits for donors con­tribut­ing to relat­ed caus­es. Flow-through shares are a com­plex but pow­er­ful tool for incen­tiviz­ing invest­ment in renew­able ener­gy and oth­er high-risk sec­tors in Cana­da by pro­vid­ing sig­nif­i­cant tax advan­tages to investors. The speak­er empha­sizes that this is an under­uti­lized tool in the renew­able ener­gy sec­tor which explains why this is the third install­ment of this top­ic on doc­tor renew­able. It’s not sim­ple to under­stand but could be a major source of financ­ing to sup­port mov­ing beyond 19% renew­able ener­gy in Canada.

Eric goes through the arti­cle and high­lights the cal­cu­la­tions done by the reporter which shows a decrease of ener­gy effi­cien­cy com­pared to elec­tri­cal pow­er tian of 10 times. Yes ten times. This arti­cle is unusu­al as the per­son who wrote it knows how to cal­cu­late num­bers. Eric goes through his cal­cu­la­tions show­ing how a diesel fer­ry that did a 12-mile route near Oslo was replaced at huge cost by a hydro­gen fer­ry using an EU grant. Like hydro­gen cars, busses, trains and the like, the same out­come pre­vails with fer­ries: hydro­gen used for trans­porta­tion is always a fail­ure. For this project, emis­sions went up, reli­a­bil­i­ty went down, and costs went through the roof. The author amus­es him­self by show­ing how peo­ple start to influ­ence politi­cians, tax­pay­er funds are spent, the hydro­gen project costs spi­ral and at the end an elec­tri­cal dri­ve train is employed. This project shows us how deeply com­mit­ted peo­ple are to doing every­thing they can to avoid the tran­si­tion to a 100% renew­able ener­gy world using an intel­li­gent approach. Eirc blames Robert for cli­mate change being vic­tims of sales­peo­ple that sale projects that we know in advance work against cli­mate change.

Robert and Eric dis­cuss these two arti­cles and the issue sur­round­ing the use of diesel, elec­tric and hydro­gen bus­es in Win­nipeg, high­light­ing the city’s deci­sion to revert to diesel bus­es despite the avail­abil­i­ty of elec­tric bus­es pro­duced local­ly. Robert and Eric express frus­tra­tion with city offi­cials for ignor­ing the poten­tial of elec­tric bus­es in favor of diesel, claim­ing that hydro­gen is less effi­cient and more envi­ron­men­tal­ly dam­ag­ing than elec­tric options. They argue for a long-term plan to tran­si­tion to elec­tric bus­es while address­ing con­cerns about infra­struc­ture and cold weath­er per­for­mance. The con­ver­sa­tion also touch­es on recent leg­is­la­tion of Bill C‑59 that makes it ille­gal to false­ly claim for exam­ple that hydro­gen bus­es are zero emis­sions, empha­siz­ing the need for account­abil­i­ty in envi­ron­men­tal claims. Robert and Eric crit­i­cize the influ­ence of fos­sil fuel indus­tries and media on pub­lic per­cep­tion and pol­i­cy, advo­cat­ing for a shift towards renew­able ener­gy sources in line with THE RED CUP, a real­is­tic approach to solve cli­mate change and use the per­cent­age of renew­ables as the benchmark.