(upbeat music) - As many as 25,000 residents and visitors were forced to evacuate five days ago before a wall of flames raced towards town. - For many generations, the town of Jasper and the perks surrounding it have been a source of pride. - We are, you know, in this cycle that's going to keep repeating itself. You know, it could be BAMP next year. It could be BAMP next month. (upbeat music) - Hello and welcome to episode 223 of The Clean Energy Show. I'm Brian Stockton. - And I'm James Wittingham. This week, one of the most beautiful places on earth has been ravished by an unfightable wildfire. Ironically, the crew spent some of their time protecting a fossil fuel pipeline. - That's a hilarious joke, James. I hope. Vermonters can get up to $6,000 towards a new EV if their old car was damaged in extreme flooding that was amplified because of climate change. Replacing old with new. I believe that's called the virtuous cycle. No, wait, it's the vicious cycle. - An east coast city in Canada is saving money by buying wind power for their citizens. The Grinch power company isn't happy about losing out though. So lock your doors this Christmas. - The Olympic city of Paris is going green with a big emphasis on dedicated bike paths between Olympic venues. And we're being told they're putting a big emphasis on clean energy sources like hydrogen. And we now join the Olympic opening ceremonies all ready in progress. - Getting the honor to light the Olympic hundred. The flame that burns greatly throughout the games symbolizing so much for these athletes and everyone involved and how unique and how creative to be in a hydrogen-filled gas balloon. - It's starting to rain again. It's the rain has flacked up a little bit. They backed notice of this different dust, holding it just enough and keep it from it. - It's just in the flame. - Get it started, get it started. Hit fire and it's striking. It's striking, terrible. - Oh, the humanity. All that abhorred this edition of the Clean Energy Show. - So yeah, I was watching the Olympic opening ceremonies. Did you watch that James? - Yeah, I mean, how many hours was it? - It was way too long. We had the replay, right? So we didn't have to watch it live. So we kept skipping over the boring parts, like the speeches and, you know, the parade of athletes. So skip, skip, skip. And it still took like at least two and a half hours to watch the whole thing. - It was, it was my favorite one that they've ever done. And I think it sets the precedent. I think it's also a brilliant move because you're spending billions of dollars to promote your city, essentially. Why not? You don't do it from inside a stadium. I mean, you can do what China did and had all kinds of light shows and culture, but this was a perfect way to go. The rain didn't hamper it. I think that worked just fine. There was some amazing things in it, but it was bloated, as the New York Times said. It was bloated. The opening ceremony was great, but bloated. - Yeah. I mean, I don't know that Americans or many people in the world would have washed it, all of that. And there was some things that were risque, like a threesome, a manaje twa that they, and then there was a lot of gender diversity. And, you know, that's not gonna play in large swaths of the world. So I wonder what they did about that being that it was life. And that they didn't tell anyone, you know, what was going on, you know, no one really knew. I don't think they had full rehearsals that the public was aware about. They kept it under wraps. - Yeah, that's right. It was all happening in public, but you couldn't rehearse it in public or everybody would spoil everything. So yeah, somehow they pulled it off. There was all that rain and no one got electrocuted. Like that was a miracle in itself. But we're watching and they're getting to the part where they're gonna light the Olympic flame. And you can see the balloon there. That's the, you know, they're going up to the balloon with the flame and my son, we're all watching it. My son says, yeah, I hope that balloon's not filled with hydrogen. - It was. - And then a minute later, the announcer says, oh, the balloon is filled with hydrogen. And then quickly explained, well, not quickly, like 10 minutes later explained, oh, by the way, those aren't real flames underneath the hydrogen filled balloon. I don't know why they didn't use helium, but it's supposed to be a tribute to the first hydrogen balloon was in Paris, you know, a couple of hundred years ago or something. But, you know, it- - So every night it goes up 200 feet so that you, you know, Paris, the central Paris because it's old is flat. The skyscrapers are sort of on the edge in the business district. So a lot of actual Paris can see the flame, you know, 200 feet in the air. - Yeah. - But it's not a flame. It's misting water and LED lights, right? - Yeah, exactly. And there was a story here from the Daily Mail that explains that that was very much on purpose. I mean, not just because they didn't want to light the hydrogen balloon on flame, but it was meant as a statement, like not using fossil fuels was part of their design of this whole thing. And it has always sort of bothered me, you know, that the enormous amount of natural gas that has to be burned for this. And like we have a restaurant in our town, you know, Gulf Steakhouse that's had a flame burning outside of it for at least 50 years now. And it was always, you know, it's always cool when you walk past it, it's like, ooh, the Gulf Steakhouse flame. But, you know, 50 years of burning natural gas is maybe not great. - There was a myth that it was left over a French fry grease when I was a kid, but that's not true. It's natural gas. - Yeah, no, it is cool. And maybe, you know, a long time ago, that would have been okay when it started because a lot has changed to that 50 years. We know a lot more stuff now. And maybe they should have a LED and missed flame. - Yeah. - Actually, it looked pretty cool if they could pull it off. - Well, you can get those LED light bulbs that sort of look like flames. I mean, you know, it's not the same, obviously. A flame is still cool, but, you know. - Well, I think it's uncomfortable now. So Jasper National Park is the big news story in Canada, Brian and I are in Canada. We're in Western Canada, where a day is drive or so from Jasper. And it's one of my favorite places in the world. It's a little less accessible than Banff and a little bit more expensive than Banff and a little more restricted in the camping. But yeah, they evacuated, what, 20,000 people, 5,000 residents, 15,000 visitors a few days ago? - Yeah, no, it was terrible. I mean, it was looking for a while there that maybe the whole town was lost, but you know, it's 30% approximately of the town destroyed. But the Jasper Park Lodge was also saved. I stayed there, it was about a year and a half ago. We talked about it on the podcast. My sister-in-law got married at the Jasper Park Lodge, and we had an amazing stay there. Jasper is, of course, stunningly beautiful. But I posted on my Instagram, one of the best pictures I got at the time was from the L&W restaurant in Jasper, 'cause they have these trees growing inside the restaurant. And we receded underneath one, and it made this fantastic photo. It's on my Instagram now, but after a couple of days, I was able to confirm that that restaurant was destroyed by fire, sadly. - 'Cause that right, it was? - It was right on the edge of the damaged zone. So the buildings just across the street to the west survived. They were right on the edge. - Right, well, I'm happy to report that the EV chargers survived. They had only recently put in fast chargers. They had not terribly fast. - Yeah. - There's two, two flow 50 kilowatt chargers for something that is so important. I mean, you can spend time going to a restaurant and get a charge in an hour or so at 50 kilowatts, but... - Yeah, and of course, one of the gas stations exploded. Actually, the gas station is near that L&W restaurant. So that would definitely not have helped in the effort to save it. - Yeah, well, we'll talk a little bit more about that in a few minutes. But I'm planning a trip to Calgary, not quite Jasper, but so we've got, my niece is getting married at the end of August. And we've known about this for over a year now. So I've been thinking about it for over a year now. And a year ago, right around now, I think is when we went out to BC on the west coast. And that was it, you know, keep in mind that I'm driving an EV, a older technology EV. It's a new car, it was brand new at the time, but it's charges slow, it charges at 50 kilowatts max and then goes down. So it's a very slow charging car. It has a decent range at about 417 kilometers or 260 miles. - Yeah. - But that's not good enough if you're charging slow. It takes a long time to charge. And I had to patient kids and... - Yeah, and you had to really debate whether or not it was worth it to take the EV. You ended up taking it last year and... - Dreamly glad I did, like extremely, like it was just a delight to drive. It was more room than we thought we had. I actually enjoyed the experience. I don't think my kids did. And unfortunately, my kids are coming to the wedding, but you know, they were a little bit more impatient about it. It was a okay way for my partner and I to travel. Like you just take a break and go shopping and have a snack and go to the bathroom. And it's a nice little thing. - Because we have such a massive country, there's a real emphasis on making good time. Any time you're on a road trip around here, because there's generally so much distance that you have to cover. So everyone gets sort of a formula one kind of mindset when they're on a road trip of like, minimizing the time spent at your stops. And you just have to think of it different. - Yeah, and I've been like that. And my family hasn't always... There are like 40 minutes anywhere when they were younger. Now they're... My son is like digesting by the time I figured out the charger, like you know, I'm looking forward to plug and charge, which means you could just plug into the flow of branded chargers and then it'll just work. I did that the other night to test it out to see if it's still working. So that's good. You know, what I hope, Brian, in that I did this trip a year ago, the first leg of it to Calgary is I was hoping things would approve. They have not, nothing has changed. And there's been millions of dollars in the federal government in Canada to increase charging. And no one has done that here. They thought, well, it's good enough. Well, the fricking things are broken. Like, so if current might be sketchy, like one major city in the middle of the trip may not have charging for me. And because Musk fired his supercharger team, that means Chevy doesn't get access to the supercharger network. It was on the cusp of doing that. And I might have had that. I looked at it and I thought, you know, if you have any car, Brian, that's not my car, that's not a Tesla or a slow charging car, that supercharger network is the way to go. Like I was planning that down on a better road planner to see what the charging would look like. It's way better on the Tesla network because you have anything. Now, say you have an Ionic 5 from Hyundai or, you know, something that charges fast, you can take advantage of that 250 kilowatt Tesla charger and spend a fraction of the time. And, you know, the fast charges that are available from Pedro Canada, a gas station chain here, and they're never working. They're still a year later, they're still not working. In fact, some of them, there is a co-op, there is another city in Alberta because it's an oil petrol province that doesn't have squat medicine hat. And I'm actually going to stay overnight in Brooks, Alberta. I'm going to pull a stock in and not do the whole trip because why, you know, and I'm going to go to Dinosaur Provincial Park, which is near there. There's a whole bunch of fossils and it's quite fascinating and it's bad landy and, you know, interesting there. So that's what we're going to do. But I'm just pissed off that there's a few dealerships that have popped up and some of them have, say, restricted only for Nissan customers. And they're not supposed to do that because they got money from the federal government. And if I find out that these guys are restricting their access and they got federal funding for it, I'm going to report them. I'm going to take the time to do that and anyone else out there should do the same because, you know, the federal government paid a large chunk for those chargers and they can't keep them to the cells and they sure as hell shouldn't be blocking them because that's what the Toyota dealership and Regina is doing where we are. They've got a new charger up but it's filled up with their own cars because they don't give a crap and they don't understand anything about it. It's frustrating. You're going to find me getting angry today a lot. - Yeah, we've been doing this podcast for four and a half years and there's been incredible changes and incredible progress but it just never seems to happen really fast enough. - So last year we stayed at a hotel in Surrey, BC that was quite a ways away from Vancouver but not bad. It was a 40 minute drive and we enjoyed that drive 'cause everything's new to us, right? When was the first time we had been there and it's across the street from a community sports complex where I don't know badminton, tennis, track and field, everything happens, big parking lot. And now at that time they had a level two charging which is kind of what I have at home here but not overnight charging, better than a normal plug-in. In that lot from, I forget the brand name of the company but it's one of the more common brand names, it had just broke. So two charges there did nothing for me. So I had to drive to a fast charger 10 minutes away which was fine, it worked out fine. But now that same parking lot, BC Hydro, God bless them. And by the way, they've invited us to the fully charged expo out there. Not personal, but they've given us a 50% discount voucher because I'm a customer. They're putting in two chargers, two fast chargers there, four fast chargers there. So what a difference that makes. That hotel would be my hotel of choice because it's got four fast chargers in the parking lot across the street. Well, it's actually adjacent to us, not even across the street. So that's cool. And then they're building the transit system, the rail transit system out there in a few years it'll be done and that place would be really close to connecting to the sky train. Yeah, so that's great. It was a charge my charger by the way, which is often not working. But these are gonna be flow chargers and there's some flow charges there. And yeah, so it's interesting. Yeah, they have level two as well. And it's really fast level two. Like one of them is like what I have in the driveway about six and a half kilowatts, but one is about 16. So some cars like my Bolt does 11.5 kilowatts and that's really not much use to me 'cause I couldn't come up with that much power at home. But it would be kind of interesting to have a shorter level two charging on the road take advantage of that. Some cars can do that fast, but it's nice to see that those are starting to pop up. I noticed that the Tesla destination chargers are quite fast. The level two for Teslas are often a lot faster than the CCS, the non-Tesla branded charger. Mine's 11 kilowatts at home, but yeah, I believe they do go up to 16 kilowatts, but maybe you need, yeah, you'd probably be a bigger amperage connection or something. Yeah, but at hotels and things, I've noticed they're way better for if you look on Plugshare then. So I did get a hotel in Calgary that has charging. It took me two days of actual work to find one. And I found it by accident. I was getting so frustrated 'cause I searched for hotels 'cause, you know, when I book a hotel, I need to get the most for my money. And I'm checking on location and the ratings and everything like that. And there's always something that kills it. Like, you know, oh, there was a murder there last night and no one cared. And you know, things like that that I have to, it wasn't that bad. But, you know, there's always somebody that says the ratings will, the reviews will turn you away. So I did found one, it's called the Element Hotel in Calgary Airport Hotel. It's not really near the airport, it's kind of near the airport in the eastern part of town near the Trans Canada Highway. So yeah, it has complimentary EV charging and complimentary bicycle lending. They will lend you a bicycle, which, wow, grabbed my heart right there. And it's a new hotel, so it's nice. And the reviews are 4.5 on Google. So yeah, and then even if that falls through, I've got a charging location 11 minutes away. There aren't that many chargers in Calgary. It's a big city, is what? - Yeah. - 1.2 million is only, I can't remember what the population of Calgary is, but it's a lot. Because of the oil capital, they don't have EV chargers. So there's like, I don't know how many of them are. There's four or five, and you know, one of them's probably not working. And so, which is odd that they would do that because they are so near Banff and the Rocky Mountains of Canada, where most tourists in the world go when they go to Canada, a lot of their economy is dependent on tourism and they're screwing the pooch there. The pooch, the dog is not happy. What I did, Brian, is I could, because I searched for hotels with Google Maps because it comes up with prices and sometimes you get a deal, I put a star on my Google Maps for all the superchargers were non-Tesla superchargers. And there, you know, there's, unlike Tesla who has like eight or 20 stalls, you know, these chargers for non-Tesla's only have one or two sometimes at best for. So, you know, that's why there's a number of them. So I put stars on my Google Maps of all the locations and then I searched for hotels and I could see where the stars were and that really helped me. And I found a hotel not too far from a charger, relatively speaking, plus it has one and it seems great. So, yeah, looking forward to that trip and I will update you. I'm just disappointed that the, there's two cities along the way that could be sketchy for me. And they wouldn't be if I had access to the Tesla charging network, which is coming for non-Tesla brands and all those chargers along that corridor are available to non-Tesla brands like Rivians can charge there and Ford can charge there and they do, you know, but the trip north to my city where my kid goes to school, that Tesla charger is not open to the public. So I'm hoping they build a second set 'cause it's gonna be very busy in the winter time when more people have Teslas. - Yeah, my partner went to a cottage north of Toronto recently and so she had to rent a car and she didn't want to spend the time to do the research. You know, like she thought about getting a Tesla, she'd prefer not to drive a gas car, but she just didn't want to do the research and then she got to this cottage and it was littered with Teslas. Like there was nothing but Teslas, you know, so clearly it wouldn't have been an issue to charge, but you know, you do have to spend that extra time sometimes. - Well, I hate to say it, but I've ran, you know, different things like Teslas through the A Better Road Planner on different things like from here to Denver, which is like, you know, 1800 kilometers, it's much better in a Tesla, even a standard range Tesla in the summertime. In the wintertime, you bought a longer range vehicle so that you could handle the winter and that's covered that problem. But yeah, it's frustrating because Musk is such a douche bag and so many people are affected by the musking of the brand that I don't want to seem like a, you know, a toxic male tech bro, if I'm driving a Tesla around, but I'm seriously considering that, you know, buying one uses a use market is coming down and that would certainly, but again, this is like a once a year thing for us. We don't do a lot of traveling and, but my God, it's a lot of planning. And my God, it shouldn't be a lot of planning, you know, it's, we should be past that. We should be progressing and we're not and that's my point. I'll leave it at that. - Yeah, we're still in a bit of an EV dead spot where we live. Okay, so we're going to talk about Vermont, which we talked about a while ago on the podcast, a small US state. They were recently suing the fossil fuel companies to help pay for all of the damage that they've had because of extreme weather that's caused by climate change. Now they've got a new incentive up to $6,000 for residents of Vermont to replace their flood damaged cars with an EV. So they had extreme flooding, lots of cars got ruined. And this is a program that already existed, but they're just sort of loosening up the rules to allow people who had their cars damaged in the flood to go in and hopefully get an EV. I think it includes plug-in hybrids as well, or, you know, even high efficiency vehicles. But this is the kind of thing that I like because the best time to go green is when you're replacing something that's at the end of its life. So if your car was damaged by a flood, obviously it's at the end of its life. And so a little bit of incentive to go, you know, replace at that time, which is why, like I also wanted to mention this story from Vancouver, the city of Vancouver, the clean green city of Vancouver, they recently reversed the decision about allowing new natural gas. New natural gas hookups were banned in new buildings in Vancouver. And for reasons, I cannot understand the city council reversed this decision and they're now allowing new natural gas in new buildings. But, you know, it's an expensive thing to change the world to clean energy. It's totally doable. But the most cost-efficient way to do that is when something has reached the end of its life cycle. And so if you're now allowing new buildings in Vancouver to have a natural gas hookup, well, guess what? They're not gonna wanna get rid of those natural gas hookups two years from now, three years from now. They're gonna wanna keep it for 10, 20, 30 years. But we have to take these opportunities that, you know, if your furnace is getting old, that is the time to replace it with a heat pump, you know? And especially in Vancouver, the mild weather on the coast there, they have no need for natural gas out there. Heat pumps can absolutely do everything. But yeah, it's this idea of, you know, we gotta replace these things when they're at the end of their life, please try and make that the point that, you know, 'cause if your furnace is dying now and you end up replacing it with another natural gas furnace, well, guess what? You're not gonna wanna get rid of it. You're gonna wanna keep it for 10, 20 years, 30 years to pay it off. So I don't know, I like the incentive in Vermont, but bad news for British Columbia and Vancouver. As many as 25,000 residents and visitors were forced to evacuate five days ago before a wall of flames raced towards town. The fire has now merged with another wildfire and quadrupled in size. Nearly 70% of the town is still standing, however, and crews are focused on keeping it that way. - An intense wildfire burned through the historic National Park town site of Jasper in the Rocky Mountains of Alberta, Canada. Jasper National Park is one of the most beautiful places on earth. It is the pride of every Canadian and beloved by approximately 2 1/2 million visitors a year. The fossil fuel apologist and possible climate denier, Danielle Smith runs the province as the premier. And if she's not a climate denier, she's a climate destroyer. She is constantly pooping efforts to address climate change. But she had this to say after the town was hit by an unstoppable wildfire. For many generations, the town of Jasper and the parks surrounding it have been a source of pride with some of the most beautiful scenery in the entire, in the world. A feeling that even though you've just left home, you're coming home. The same Jack Wagon is constantly apologizing for the fossil fuel industry, constantly diminishing climate change. And those who are trying to protect it, she introduced a moratorium on solar and wind projects last year that basically killed the industry. It made it very difficult for them to erect things anywhere anymore. So that is really diminished. They were on fire there, no pun intended. They were putting up all kinds of solar on a grand scale far more than anywhere in Canada. She said things like people aren't really willing to fight climate change. So I guess, what are we gonna do? That is addressing the EV adoption in Alberta. Of course, in your borders there, it sucks. But if you look outside your bubble, the world is changing and you guys are rednecks over there. You're not addressing what needs to be done. So even this is from the narwhal. This is kind of a leftist center news organization in Canada. Even though the Trans Mountain pipeline, this is a pipeline that runs through the pristine Rocky Mountains, through Jasper. It was recently twinned. I saw them working on it last year when I went out through the Rockies as it goes all the way to the coast so that they can export fossil fuels. They spent time protecting this infrastructure where maybe they could have protected historic buildings if they weren't worried about this frickin' pipeline, which is ironic, of course, because we know that climate change is affecting this sort of thing and I'll get to more of that in a bit. So even though the Trans Mountain recently estimated the wildfire risk to its pipeline running through Jasper National Park is low, quote unquote, crews were fighting to protect it this week. Quote, "Canadian wildfire reaches Jasper. "Firefighters battle to protect oil pipeline, "set a Reuters headline. "Park Canada confirmed in a social media post "a Wednesday evening, it is protecting "critical infrastructure from out of control wildfire." Yeah, some of that is the water treatment facility and things like that, but also that frickin' pipeline. I can understand why, 'cause you don't want the pipeline to blow up too, right? - Well fair, that would add fuel to the fire literally. - Yeah, so it listed examples such as the town's hospital, wastewater treatment facility in parts of Trans Mountain 15 or 1,150 kilometer pipeline that transports both crude oil and refined petroleum products from Edmonton to refineries and exports. That's in Alberta, right to the coast and exports the terminals in BC and Washington state coasts. The portion that runs through the park was twinned in 2008 actually. Climate change is responsible for increasing intense fires. This is John Valent, the author of "Fireweather." He wrote a book after Fort McMurray, which is basically a city in the far northwest of, or northeast of Alberta, where the oil sands are. And they were hit by fire a few years ago. He wrote this book called "Fireweather." This is a clip of him talking about what he sees coming next. - We are in this cycle that's going to keep repeating itself. It could be banned next year, it could be banned next month. Honestly, it could be the west side of Vancouver or parts of Calgary. We are really exposed right now and we are being told over and over again that we are not ready for 21st century catastrophic fire. Well, this is the nature of the beast as Darby Allen called it back in 2016. 21st century fire has certain hallmarks and that is driven by climate change. We have higher temperatures, we have lower relative humidities, we have more evaporation, we have much drier forests, and that creates a space and an opportunity for fire to not just burn, but to act explosively with astonishing speed. And over and over again, when I interview folks who've gone through this, all of them are shocked by the speed of the fire and how quickly the embers flew, how far they flew and how quickly they ignited. - So what's going on here, Brian, is that the embers would take off and preheat the air. So before the place was burned, you had all these embers, there's so many of them that it was making it super hot. And then when the fire got there, it just exploded. And there was a 100 meter high flame that was just massively high in a wall. And this is, so many people on social media are blaming the federal government 'cause they own Jasper National Park because it's a national park. But in truth, this Alberta Premier was responsible for cutting forest budgets. And part of the problem is they protected the forest for a hundred years and not let it burn, but it's also climate change and this is getting worse. And this is not gonna stop. You're not gonna have a freaking tourist industry in Alberta because of climate change. And one day you're gonna have to reconcile with that. - Yeah, of course it's affecting us. - The clean energy show wants to hear from you. Contact us by email at cleanenergyshow@gmail.com or by online voicemail at speakpipe.com/cleanenergyshow. - And the fires are of course affecting us in terms of smoke. Somebody posted a chart the other day online of the number of smoke hours. Like we've always had a little bit of smoke in the air here in the summers, but it used to be something like 10 or 12 hours a year was kind of the average. And now we're getting into hundreds of hours as we frequently talk about here on the show. - Listen, I went to take star photos with my daughter the other night 'cause I had a good sleep for once. So I figured I could stay up and nothing, it's just a white sky when you do long exposures. It's just, it's taken away nature in a sense. I used to go in the pool and look at the stars and now that's not even possible anymore. - All right, so on to Paris and the Olympics. We've talked a bit about this before. The story is from Electric. And since the Olympics have started, I thought it was a nice kind of recap of what they're doing in the city of Paris to reduce pollution in anticipation of the games. They've had all kinds of incentives. They've been paying residents up to $4,000 to replace their gas-cuzzling cars with a bike. They have tripled fees for massive SUVs and they have banned cars in the city center altogether. But in addition to that, they've been really adding bike infrastructure. So along with the Olympic Games, they've added another 60 kilometers, 37 miles of bike lanes that specifically connect the Olympic sites in Paris. And so these are all painted pink. So if you're a tourist, if you're new to Paris and you're there for the Olympics, you can very easily see the pink paths that will take you to the various venues around Paris. They've also installed 10,000 new bike racks. So this will give all of these riders a secure place to lock outside of the Olympic venues. And then when the Olympics are over, they're gonna distribute these bike racks throughout the city of Paris. You know, there's always a discussion around the Olympics of, is this really makes sense for, you know, to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on these games? But, you know, the good part of it, the part that I like is that it generally does contribute positively to infrastructure. And I think that that's a great example of it. All of this new biking infrastructure, all of these new bike racks, they're gonna be distributed around the city afterwards. Lime is there, the e-bike and scooter sharing service. There's apparently lots of lime bikes and scooters available for people visiting Paris and by all accounts so far with the Olympics going for a few days now. It sounds like it's been really going well. - So they're banned cars from the city and the air quality has improved. They've tripled parking fees for large SUVs who aren't from the city. And they have, this was to improve air quality and it worked? - Yeah, 40% better. - Yeah. And they worked hard on improving the water quality and the scent. There was some, I think in a story today that it's maybe not as clean as they want it to be for the upcoming triathlon. So we'll see there, but it sounds like they've made some nice strides. - So are the athletes rebelling and not going in the water because of the equal eye? - I guess we're gonna find out that I just sort of read the headline today. - Yeah, well, the thing is rain is bad and they just had rain for the opening ceremonies and the day after. But yeah, it was, you know, I'm interested in cross-country mountain biking. They only have two races and that's it. And it's over. One for the women, one for the men. And they have to build this large facility. They built it on a landfill, which is like a mountain on the edge of Paris. And yeah, it came and went so fast. But anyway, I wanna talk about St. John, Canada. This is in a new Brunswick. So there's a wind farm out there that they put up and it's undercutting the power utilities, electricity prices by more than a half. So St. John has his own power utility, kinda like Saskatoon does here, but they repair their own stuff, but they buy the power from someone else, mostly from the provincial power grid, which is what they're doing out there. That's called in B power, New Brunswick power, 'cause the province is called New Brunswick. So electricity generated at the Birch Hill wind farm in St. John, and sold to St. John Energy in 2023 is undercutting prices being charged to the municipal utility. They're getting cheaper power from a wind farm than they are from the power grid. And the power grid is not happy about that now because if you don't buy their power, then that goes up for everyone who does buy their crappy fossil fuel power. So it's a discount so deep it has NB power concerned about others making a similar choice to bypass its system and price seen in a similar way. This reminds me of here in Saskatchewan a few years ago when they cut the solar subsidies and the tariff, the feed-in tariff that you got, because everybody was jumping on board and they said, well, it's gonna make it expensive for everyone else, we can't do that. That's, it's a mindset that drives me baddy. Quote, there's an electricity system that needs to be paid for, Brad Cody, the NB power vice president said last month during the energy and utilities board hearing, to the extent that customers have the wherewithal to escape NB power being their supplier of choice. That causes cross shifting onto other customers. Well, it wouldn't happen that way if you had your own goddamn renewables, you jack wagon. It's a Saskatchewan term I'm trying to spread to the rest of the world. So that's a concern. The Berkshire Wind Farm is jointly owned by the, by a local First Nation and the Nova Scotia based wind energy company Natural Forces. It opened in June, 2023. And CBC News has put some pieces of the puzzle together and found that the city paid only $41 per megawatt hour for the wind electricity. And that's only 38% of the cost of what they are paying to the power utility. 38% of the cost. And you have a lower cost for the same electron. Guess what? Maybe you should, you know, make your electrons from wind or solar. And they're whining as if renewables make up of some people's power cheaper and it's not fair. And it's not fair to the renewables. So just, just like we had in this province, and it's also the utility allowed the utility to implement a rate increase of 9.2% for residential customers in St. John. But it's higher, the rate increase was higher for everyone else in the province. So the cities did go up but it went up less than everyone else. 'Cause they had to pay for the wind farm. But even so, even the transmission lines they had to build for that wind farm, it's still cheaper. It's still a lot cheaper. Those financial benefits come despite St. John energy having to spend millions of dollars on new transmission and distribution infrastructure to handle the new supply. And this is after the provincial power utility declined to allow the electricity onto its own grid. Even for a fee they said no. Oh, so who will be left to pay for the system that we enjoy the utility cried? As rates go up even more, people are turning to renewables and the problem compounds itself. And we knew we said this many times in the show that this would happen. And it is, this is the Envy Power's generation mix, the power utility in the province. They have 12 hydro dams but they also have coal, oil and diesel power generating stations, oil and diesel. Like this is something you would see in the Arctic Circle where a small community is up there and they need electricity or a remote island that has 300 people on it. This is not something a province should be burning oil and diesel generation for a massive power grid. It's the worst I've ever heard of. It's probably worse than coal or it's pretty near. So they also have a nuclear generating station and one solar farm and they also purchase natural gas powered facilities from other people. Anyway, it drives me baddie. We're gonna see more of this. It is a problem and it seems like some people just don't get it. - Yeah, and there is no law that people can't make their own power. You know, utilities need to get on board. Okay, quick update on Cummins. This is the company that makes diesel engines. And I got interested in Cummins when I visited their world headquarters in the beautiful city of Columbus, Indiana. So we've been talking periodically about Cummins because I would love for them to be able to make a successful switch from diesel engines to other powertrains, 'cause I love that city of Columbus so much. Anyway, there's a story here from Electric titled Cummins New Powertrain Test Facility Proves. Hydrogen is super sketchy. And it's really just, you know, the same joke we keep making about the Hindenburg blowing up. I mean, you know, there is possibly a place for hydrogen in the clean energy future as long as it's made green. But you can never escape the fact that this stuff is extremely flammable and explosive. So they have a new dyno facility and it's for ultra low and zero emission powertrain technologies. They're trying to be powertrain agnostic. So they are looking into battery electric as well, but, you know, hydrogen as well. So these are the steps that they have to take to keep their staff safe from hydrogen. And this is in Darlington, UK, their new powertrain test facility. So these are the safety measures that they have to take at this facility that will test hydrogen vehicles. So it says with regards to hydrogen, the test area features a series of safety checks. These include sensors placed around the vehicle and the interior of the facility to monitor for fuel leaks. The interior walls are designed to protect test engineers in the event of an explosion. Well, exterior walls have specially designed plates to alleviate blast pressure. Additionally, the HVAC system is capable of renewing all the air in the chamber more than once per minute, which helps to prevent the buildup of dangerous gas pockets. So come and suspend 16 and a half million on this new facility. This is not cheap, especially when you have to prepare for possible massive explosions. They did, you know, break ground on a new $2 billion battery factory in Mississippi. So, you know, they are exploring all technologies, but I don't know, there are some players that have already decided that hydrogen may be a dead end for these type of vehicles, but Cummins still working on it. Yikes, that's scary. I mean, you know, things do happen in battery plants, but not very often. And it's sort of a, I don't know, I don't understand. I think it's a waste of time. Hydrogen's a waste of time for transportation. I think the new battery improvements that we've seen, the breakthroughs, the Chinese commercializing them already this year show that it's not going to be an issue. It's time for the lightning round. - The sound is a fast paced look at the latest headlines in climate, clean energy and transportation. A 12 kilowatt solar ray on the roof of the Watts Willbrook Church of Christ located in the predominantly Black and Hispanic city of Compton in Los Angeles County will help the congregation cut its bills in half. It's funny, churches don't seem like a thing for power, but they're doing it and yeah, it's a good thing. Here's what the electricity generation in the United States will add in the next nine months. Solar 41 gigawatts, six for wind, but battery is going to be 16. So a lot more battery storage is being added compared to wind, 10 more megawatts. A nuclear 45 megawatts, which is virtually nothing. And they're actually adding a bit of hydro as well. A lawsuit has been filed by 15 Saskatchewan residents, Brian and I live in Canada, ages 15 to 80, arguing that a plan by the provincial government power utility, SaaS power to expand, gas fired electricity generation violates charter rights to life security and security of person inequality. Think of that as a constitutional rights in the United States, that's our charter. The applicants are arguing that the government and the utility SaaS power plan to allow a certain level of emissions and it's not a good level. It's what's going to interfere with the applicant's charter rights of life at a time four. So yes, fast fact, this is via Dr. Paul Dorfman, chair of nuclear consult, 67% of the energy produced by a nuclear plant is lost as waste heat. I didn't know it was that high, that's extremely high. - You think they'd be able to harvest that somehow? - Yeah, and I think some new designs do are more efficient. 70% of fossil fuel burn is lost as a waste heat when you're generating electricity from fossil fuels. China doubles the cash subsidies to propel EV sales as economic growth falls short. So you're struggling, the economy is struggling in the year, doubled the EV incentives for conventional, if you replace your conventional car, i.e. gas or diesel, with an EV, you can get a subsidy of almost $3,000 US and that's double what it was a few days ago. A Brazilian cattle rancher has been ordered to pay more than $50 million for destroying part of the Amazon rainforest. In order to restore the previous carbon sink, last week a federal court in Brazil froze the assets of Durku Kruger to play a compensation for the damage he had caused to the climate through illegal deforestation. He did not have the right to do that, apparently. Australia's solar capacity as of March 2024 is 35.6 gigawatts or, you know, a noon on a sunny day that would output as much as 35 nuclear plants. But the remarkable thing about those 35 nuclear plants at noon on a sunny day is 2/3 of them on rooftops. That's the power of rooftops, Brian. It's far exceeded what almost anyone thought possible. 2/3 of that is on 3.6 million homes, million rooftops in Australia because, which is expensive, you have really good solar production, it all pans out. Man gets third degree burns from walking on sand dunes in Death Valley, that's stories in The Guardian. It's another CS Fast Fact. Building collisions have trimmed the total number of US birds by as much as 9%, 9% to buildings. So people combined about wind turbines. They say don't build them. Well, don't build buildings either then. I don't know. Thanks to Joe Biden's IRA Inflation Reduction Act, there are more factory construction taking place right now than there has been in 100 years. It's been 100 years since this amount of factories have been built in the United States. On 21 of July, Earth registered its warmest day in more than 100,000 years. You may have read about that many different places and it's made headlines. offshore wind is going to power 20 million UK homes within five years as the new labor prime minister, Starmer. Chevrolet Equinox EV in the United States is now cheaper to lease than the gas version. It has a popular vehicle. It's a small SUV and one of the most popular segments in the US. And now it doesn't make any sense to do that, to lease the gas version. If you do any sort of research and learn about it, I'll listen to this podcast. That'll be evident to you. And finally this week, Inside EV says the US has 145,000 gas stations and data from the Global Trade Association for convenience and refueling retail. And fuel retailing says that they have 145,000 gas stations. But the US has 65,000 public EV chargers now, including 10,000 fast chargers and the experts expect EV public chargers would likely exceed gas stations by 2032. So, and I suspect it might even be faster than that, but yeah, that's what's happening. Yeah, 'cause it won't just be the adding of EV stations. It will be the closing of gas stations. All right, that's our show for this week. You can contact us cleanenergyshow@gmail.com around social media, where clean energy pod. And we have videos on TikTok and YouTube, including special content not featured on the podcast. The video version of our podcast is currently released on Sunday, so check that out if you want to. We have a clean energy store. Radio viewers and Apple podcasts are Spotify. Donate if you can with PayPal and your show notes. If you're new, please subscribe because I get you your show delivered every week. And we'll see you next time. See you next week. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music)
