Buzzkill: Understanding the Shift in Media Perception Towards EVs

Dr. Simon Evans, Deputy Editor & Senior Policy Editor at Carbon Brief join co-hosts David, Sara, and Ed, to tease apart EV fact from fiction. 

About Our Guest:
Simon Evans is deputy editor and policy editor at Carbon Brief. Simon covers climate and energy policy. He holds a PhD in biochemistry from Bristol University and previously studied chemistry at Oxford University.

Show Notes:
(00:02:01) – Factcheck: 21 misleading myths about electric vehicles
(00:04:59) – Electric vs. Gas Cars: Is It Cheaper to Drive an EV?
(00:06:37) – IPCC Climate Change 2023 Synthesis Report
(00:10:30) – Reducing CO2 emissions from passenger cars
(00:12:15) – Good Politics Bad Policy – Why governments should end their subsidies for EVs
(00:17:25) –  U of T researchers model the health benefits of electric cars, find 'large improvement in air quality'
(00:18:45) – Roles of diffusion patterns, technological progress, and environmental benefits in determining optimal renewable subsidies in the US 
(00:20:13) – Politics in the U.S. energy transition: Case studies of solar, wind, biofuels and electric vehicles policy
(00:27:20) – Five point plan to protect drivers from a rush to net zero is backed by MPs, motorists & campaigners
(00:31:20) – Electric Vehicle Battery Supply Chains
(00:37:12) – Alberta Budget 2024: EV groups question fairness of new $200 annual tax
(00:43:46) – Yes, frigid weather may reduce your EV battery range. Here's how to prepare
(00:48:24) – Hydrogen vs Electric Cars

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Ed: Hi, I'm Ed Whittingham, and you're listening to Energy vs. Climate, the show where my co host David Keith, Sarah Hastings Simon, and I debate today's energy challenges, highlighting the Canadian context. On March 25th, we recorded a live webinar with Dr. Simon Evans, Deputy Editor and Policy Editor at Carbon Brief, a UK based website.

[00:00:26] The show title was Buzzkill, Understanding the Shift in Media Perception Toward EVs. It was an engaging and very topical conversation, and I hope you enjoy it. Now here's the show.

[00:00:40] So, uh, Simon, let's get to it. Has the volume of negative stories, media stories, about electric vehicles increased in the past six months, or is it just us? Does it just seem that way? And I think that everyone from notably Mr. Bean Rowan Atkinson in your country to prominent Canadian columnists Are getting in on it and and if yes, are there any objective measures of that?

[00:01:07] Simon: We don't have objective, you know quantitative information on the volume of of kind of negative Media coverage around electric vehicles specifically But but by what I will say is that at carbon brief One of the things that we do every day is that we're tracking media coverage relating to energy and climate change very closely particularly with a focus on the UK, but, but also internationally, you know, qualitatively, I guess you would say we've, we've really noticed a big increase in the number of negative stories.

[00:01:35] I mean, you know, thinking back a few years, I remember, you know, back in like maybe 2017 or even earlier, there were, you know, occasional scare stories about electric vehicles and what it would mean for the UK, you know, the electricity grid won't cope. There aren't enough charging points. Some of the kind of classic kind of myths around electric vehicles.

[00:01:53] But I think that they were quite few and far between. And it's now that, you know, the case, it's just relentless. I mean, so this is why last year we published this, this myth buster taking on 2021 as the most common myths about, about electric vehicles. And, you know, to be honest, since then, you know, the volume has, has has just, you know, kept going.

[00:02:14] One thing I will say, um, just, just from a UK perspective, is that we, we have got some quantitative information about newspaper editorials. And we saw over the last decade, there was a dramatic reduction in, in the kind of overtly climate skeptical newspaper editorials in the UK. But over the past 12 months, we've seen a massive increase in the number of editorials opposing specific climate solutions.

[00:02:37] So it's really been a shift from that kind of generalized climate skepticism toward towards kind of challenging renewables, challenging, you know, electric vehicles and other ways of tackling climate change. 

[00:02:48] Ed: Yeah. And I would hazard a guess that we're seeing something similar here in the North American press, but, uh, is this some of what you're seeing?

[00:02:55] Is it a case of misinformation? It's just bad reporting, getting facts wrong, or the risk of sounding like a conspiracy theorist. Do you think there's Some active disinformation campaign work at play. 

[00:03:07] Simon: To be honest, I think a lot of it is just, is just misinformation. One of the ones we might come onto is just this idea about, you know, the, the gross in the sale of EVs slowing down and that gets, that's getting misconstrued as actual sales are slowing down.

[00:03:21] So, you know, instead of growing at 50 percent a year, it's maybe growing 30 percent a year and people get confused and think that means that means we're selling less EVs. I mean, we're still sending a lot more EVs, just, just not. growing quite as quickly. I guess the other thing that's, that's worth saying is that, you know, the way that newspapers work does not necessarily involve, you know, kind of people imagine like we put Murdoch who owns a lot of, you know, a lot of media companies in the UK and, and, you know, across the world kind of issuing an edict and saying, guys, I want lots of negative stories about EVs.

[00:03:50] And that, that really isn't how it works, you know, effectively owners and editors will. Make it be known indirectly often. So, you know, a journalist might pitch a story that they want to write. And then the editors like, nah, don't fancy that. And then over time, they kind of form a form an idea about what what their editors going to say yes to.

[00:04:10] And that shapes, obviously, the coverage that the paper puts out. So I don't know if there's active disinformation https: otter. ai

[00:04:24] Really has a big impact on shaping that that kind of media narrative. I'm not so sure 

[00:04:29] Ed: now misinformation spreads often because it has a hint of truth and I know You've got a theory around that. I'd love to for you to get to let's start that there are Some valid concerns about evs and i'd say at the top of the list would be high Upfront capital cost and limited availability of ev infrastructure, although that infrastructure is Increasing rapidly, but let's let's go through in a rapid fire way Some of the other ones that you and Carbon Brief have, uh, taken on.

[00:04:59] And the one, maybe starting it, is lifetime costs. And this is all relative, by the way. The Comparator is an internal combustion engine vehicle. So the lifetime costs with that high upfront capital cost, even with your energy savings and buying electricity versus transport fuel, it's still going to cost you more over the lifetime of the vehicle.

[00:05:17] And you say, 

[00:05:18] Simon: Yeah, that's, that's not the case. The lifetime costs are much lower with EVs because the running costs are so much lower. And that's just because EVs are so much more efficient than internal cost combustion engine cars. So even though electricity per unit of energy might be expensive, you know, the running costs across a year are much, much less.

[00:05:37] lower. And that, you know, that's the case where the, uh, you know, in North America, in Europe, lots of different countries with different kinds of mixes of, of, you know, fuel taxes and electricity taxes and so on. The other thing to say is, you know, that those upfront costs are coming down quickly. You know, we're, we're starting to see huge uptick in exports from China of, you know, much cheaper EVs, even though, you know, legacy automakers in places like North America have kind of prioritized high end EVs.

[00:06:04] Um, as their way into the market, we've got companies like BYD coming out of China with much cheaper models. So I think that that calculus, even on the upfront costs is going to change quite quickly. 

[00:06:14] Ed: Yeah. And I know many consumers who are sitting on the sidelines waiting for Chinese VVs to start hitting the market and for the universal charger rule to take effect, which I think in Canada is next year, myth number two, or debatable, uh, in our rapid fire round life cycle impacts.

[00:06:30] Um, and let's talk about GHG emissions and versus taking your existing internal combustion engine and just driving it through to end of life. 

[00:06:37] Simon: This is very clear cut. You mentioned the IPCC's assessment from, from 2023, I think it was. Basically, they, you know, they found, you know, assuming you don't have like a, you know, completely coal dominated grids, you're going to see significant life cycle.

[00:06:51] Um, emission savings, you know, people imagine somewhere like China is, has a coal, coal dependent grid, and therefore maybe driving an EV isn't a good idea there, but actually even in China, you know, there's something like 60 percent coal. Um, so even there, you're saying something like a 40 percent reduction in, in emissions over, over the course of your life cycle, um, you know, this is comparing like a new EV versus a new combustion engine car.

[00:07:13] And again, this, you know, this just comes down to the, the efficiency. And you have to also think about the fact that the, the grid is getting clean. over time as we build out renewables and other low carbon sources of electricity. I think that there's kind of three key issues that people kind of stumble over and that makes it seem like combustion engine cars aren't as bad in terms of emissions.

[00:07:33] Firstly, they tend to ignore the fact that, you know, when you buy a car and it says this car does whatever, like 50 miles to the gallon or whatever it says on the sticker, the real world's pretty much results show that that actually is, is generally not very accurate. So you're looking at like 25 or even 40 percent higher emissions per mile.

[00:07:51] Then the second thing is people tend to ignore the fact that actually refining fuel creates lots of emissions as well. And the third thing is you tend, you know, people tend to overstate the emissions associated with manufacturing batteries, which obviously is a relatively new technology and it's getting more efficient and cheaper over time.

[00:08:09] And that, that comes with, you know, lower, lower emissions. And when you put all of those things together, then, you know, that's why, you know, you see 50 or 60 percent savings in greenhouse gas emissions, including the whole life cycle. 

[00:08:22] Ed: I'm glad you mentioned batteries because they often get singled out for criticism and it seems especially of late and the criticism being issues around the environmental and social impacts of beginning of life.

[00:08:33] So the mining that affects rural and often indigenous communities. And end of life, that is disposing of the batteries. How did you do that? So what, what did you and carbon brief say about that? 

[00:08:42] Simon: Just to start off, like we obviously can't ignore and it's important to take into account and, you know, try and address the, the environmental social impacts of mining.

[00:08:52] which are significant and it is the case that there will need to be a significant increase in in mining in order to satisfy the needs for you know critical minerals for for making batteries and other clean technologies um that said I think people need a bit of perspective so I think you know at the moment we're we're extracting and burning every single year like something like 15 billion tons of fossil fuels.

[00:09:16] Um, that's sort of an unimaginably large amount of material that we're, we're pulling out of the ground to, to feed our kind of fossil fuel habit if you like. And that's something, you know, you need to put fuel into your car every single week. It's like an ongoing flow of energy. fossil fuels going through the system.

[00:09:33] With electric vehicles and other clean technologies, you're, you know, you're mining critical minerals, you're building a battery and then, and then you run the battery with electricity and that can be clean electricity. And so it's, it's, it's a totally different, you know, it's a stock of batteries, if you like, and a stock of electric vehicles.

[00:09:48] And that's quite a different impact. And in terms of like looking at looking ahead, if, if we get on a kind of safe pathway, you might be talking about 30 million tons of critical minerals needing to be mined in 2030. And that's just like hundreds of times lower just in terms of the weight. So without wanting to kind of dismiss the, the, the impact associated with mining, all of that material, I think people do need some perspective.

[00:10:11] Ed: Um, and the last one, and then we'll get to our group discussion, plug in hybrid electric vehicles in a grid. You mentioned China's grid, um, Alberta still has a fairly. Where two of us are sitting today, a fairly, uh, carbon intensive grid at 450 grams for, uh, CO2 per kilowatt hour. You said by email that the latest real world data recently published by the European Commission confirms plug in hybrid electric vehicles are garbage when it comes to cutting carbon.

[00:10:39] So just briefly, why is that? Why wouldn't it be a good choice in a place like Alberta? 

[00:10:45] Simon: One of the ideas is, you know, people are worried about range. They're worried about charging infrastructure. And so people are like, well, why don't we just kind of, you know, ease into things by a plug in hybrid? That means you can charge it with electricity.

[00:10:58] But also if you, if you run out of range, if you, you find that you're somewhere and there isn't a plug to plug into, you can just run it on the, on the combustion engine and keep going. And you know, then you don't have any of those. So kind of range, exactly. range anxiety concerns. The issue is that just because you can plug it in, and just because on paper, if you did plug it in all the time, you would have, you know, quite significant reductions in, in, in the emissions associated with running that, that vehicle doesn't mean that people in reality actually do plug it in.

[00:11:27] What the, you know, the data you referred to from the European Commission found is that the kind of on paper savings, you know, in reality, it's something like three and a half times worse. And the on paper savings of plug in hybrids, simply because people just don't plug it in.

[00:11:44] Ed: Now, uh, David and Sarah, so we agree with the IPCC statement that EVs are likely crucial, and that was the quote they used, likely crucial for tackling transport emissions. It's happening, you know, EV sales are growing. When we compare the cost effectiveness of policies to incentivize EVs, say, to other measures, it's difficult to calculate that, When technologies are changing rapidly with those as caveats and David, let me crack open the near term cost effectiveness discussion.

[00:12:14] So by one measure, um, by the McDonnell Laurier Institute, that, uh, the combination of federal and provincial rebates represents a very high cost per ton. This is the rebates for EVs. And on the order of 355 per ton of greenhouse gas emissions in Alberta, that's 964 per ton in Quebec. And given the high capital cost of EVs, these subsidies at high cost per ton bases tend to benefit high income earners more than anyone else.

[00:12:44] So that's the kind of nameplate criticism. David, can you talk about some of the ranges of costs and cost effectiveness of comparing EVs to other options, say various low carbon fuels? pathways or walkability or cycling or even public transit. 

[00:13:00] David: Yeah, I can try it. It's very hard. I want to maybe start by saying like what it means to calculate cost effectiveness So first you have to calculate the life cycle cost of owning some ev say for 10 years That means both the capital cost and the real Cost of money that you as a consumer have to pay compared to other costs of money.

[00:13:18] And then the operating costs, which are going to be lower than the gasoline car. So that's a kind of levelized cost you need to calculate. Then you need to calculate the same levelized cost using the same methods and same cost of capital and so on for a, uh, a gasoline car. And then you have to find cars that are comparable, which turns out to be very hard with the same amenities and other properties.

[00:13:38] And I've tried to do this with students in different ways. Like engineering students in careful ways, it's not easy to actually find comparables. And the comparability really matters when you're trying to calculate the cost difference. So that overall is going to tell you the levelized cost difference of the two vehicles.

[00:13:53] So if you have the levelized cost difference, then the other thing you need is the average difference in carbon intensity. And that there is no question, just as Simon said, that in really any situation, all but a few situations, EVs have substantially lower emissions. But calculating that emission delta also isn't actually easy to do accurately, and it's very location dependent depends on the grid carbon intensity, but it's more than just the average good carbon intensity depends on the typical charging profile by time of day or week of the vehicles compared to the grid carbon intensity, which varies with time.

[00:14:24] So in practice to do this right, you got to do all those things. And that's why if there was no bias, if there were no axis being ground, if you were just trying to do this in a objective way. You'd find that there was a big scatter in estimates of these costs. I've tried to do it a couple times with strong students and got big ranges, you know, up to many, many hundreds of dollars on carbon.

[00:14:45] I think in some cases that's correct, uh, and other places it's going to be much lower. It's very hard to know. And so I think my point there is it's actually A, quite hard to calculate even without these strong opinions. Uh, my impression is that in many places it's many hundreds of dollars a ton still.

[00:15:01] That's sort of what I've got with my own calculations for the vehicle I bought. Then there's a whole separate question. A rigid econ Would say that you should never pay 250 to abate a ton of carbon if you can some other place in the economy paid 200 a ton of carbon. And to be clear that I'm actually not thinking about alternative fuels.

[00:15:19] I think for light duty vehicles, electrics are going to take it. And there's all sorts of reasons to believe that's going to be true in the long run. Um, but in the long run, as economists also say, we're all dead. And so the short run does matter in thinking about how we allocate our money for carbon. But it still might be right that in some situations it is worth, uh, either individuals paying more or society paying more in order to drive induced technological change.

[00:15:44] And, and that was the whole point of the California Low Carbon Fuels Commander for exact, for example, was exactly structured in that way. So it may sometimes be right to pay more when you know you're inducing technological change, but it's not as if you know exactly how technological change will work.

[00:15:59] And that argument can't say that in every case you should pay for very expensive things. So that's a big complicated way to say. A, I don't know. B, it's legitimate to ask the question. It's not just anti EVism. There are places where the EV, uh, cost effectiveness is going to be relatively low compared to other things we can do in the economy.

[00:16:20] And it is true that those subsidies often go more to wealthy people now. Of course, that's not going to be true in the future. So that's a long winded way of saying, I think there really are issues here, even though I'm personally really excited by my EV and really do think that, A bunch of concerns we had, say, about cobalt and batteries are just going away incredibly fast, and I think that we will end up with very deep EV penetration.

[00:16:44] Ed: And David, uh, uh, thanks for that. I want to get all of us later just to talk about Canada's specific approach, and Um, to incentivizing EVs and EV production. And if that's on the latter case, right. Industrial policy, Sarah, what is your take on this? And also, you know, what, what did the numbers tell you when, when you looked at an EV purchase?

[00:17:05] Sara: Sure. So when I think about the benefits, I think one of the things that, you know, that, that, uh, study you cited Ed and many others. Um, don't pay enough attention to, or in that case, don't pay any attention to, are the non climate benefits. And those are actually quite significant, and they impact marginalized socioeconomic groups most strongly.

[00:17:24] And so, there was a recent paper by, uh, Dr. Hatsupulu, apologies for probably butchering that name, um, looking at the, the benefits of electrification of cars and SUVs, um, in the greater Toronto area. And there they found that the, Her vehicle social benefits, um, were somewhere around 9, 850. So, you know, David's point is well taken that, you know, you probably could do that analysis in different ways and find somewhat different numbers, but the general scope of it or the general size of it, I think gives some kind of indication when we compare that to, you know, a 5, 000 federal benefit, a piece of that is the carbon.

[00:18:01] Um, benefits, but a very significant piece of that is really the direct air pollution, uh, reduction. And so reducing things like NO2 and near roadways, you know, it's important if we want to do this kind of cost testing of these subsidies, we need to test, you know, whole benefits. And for those that are concerned about the fact that, you know, we find obviously for all new technology adoption, it's, it's higher socioeconomic groups that are maybe benefiting directly from those subsidies in terms of the purchase of EVs.

[00:18:30] It's the more marginalized socioeconomic groups that actually face the worst of that, um, air pollution because they are the ones that live. Typically closer to large roadways where, where they're more exposed to that. So I think it's important, you know, to, to kind of take that big picture. Look, um, I also wanted to just mention one other, I think, interesting study that gets at David's other points around cost reduction.

[00:18:52] This was in the case of, uh, solar subsidies, but Dr. Uh, Tebu in, uh, energy policy, along with some coauthors looked at trying to say, you know, what would be the optimal solar subsidy, um, sort of pathway over time. Based on both the direct emissions reductions and the learning costs, and what they find is that very high subsidies up front to actually drive down the cost of, in this case, solar, but, you know, presumably one assumes the same kind of thing applies to EVs, um, that fall off over time is the right way to do things.

[00:19:23] Um, and that comes back again, then to kind of, well, how do you do that in a fair way? If you. Have only high subsidies up front and then remove them. Of course, you're not leaving those subsidies for others who might be buying EDs later on. And for that, I think we can look to California again and sort of some of what they're doing around having, um, very significant ED subsidies and then starting to pull those back and having them means tested, right?

[00:19:45] Once you have a significant level of adoption, then you have those subsidies only for those that are making below a certain amount of money each year. So very much, there are ways to, you know. address the challenges or concerns that people may have as long as they're, you know, truly legitimate concerns.

[00:20:01] And then last point before I throw it back to you, Ed, um, just coming back to this kind of increased polarization, I think that part of it in my mind really reflects the degree and level of adoption that we're seeing of EVs, right? And so Dr. Leah Stokes and others have really, I think, documented well how, uh, there's increased polarization as technology matures and it actually starts.

[00:20:21] to become a threat to incumbent, uh, incumbents within the sector. And I think, you know, we must be seeing some of that within, um, this, this increased pushback against TVs. 

[00:20:31] Ed: Yes, that's the hint of actually a disinformation campaign. And I want to, before we turn to audience Q and a, just talk about what we're seeing around media coverage of EVs.

[00:20:41] Generally, in the context of what we're seeing the debate around climate change and going and Simon, you had mentioned it where we're no longer disputing the science of climate change. But now people are really raising some questions, some invalid, some valid around particular approaches to addressing climate change.

[00:20:57] But Simon, back to you, you know, we've had coming up to nine years of a liberal government that has done a lot to incentivize EV purchases. And manufacturing and that's, you know, the rebates that we'd mentioned, provincial government, some not in our province in Alberta, but many provinces have their own rebates.

[00:21:15] We've got a ZEV mandate of a hundred percent zero emission vehicle sales by 2035. For all new light duty vehicles and we have infrastructure investments, which we'll tackle separately. You know, you're on your latest, greatest conservative, uh, prime minister in Rishi Sunak. So it's a nice study in contrast.

[00:21:33] What, what has been the UK government's approach? 

[00:21:36] Simon: I'll talk about the UK, but just before I do that, I'd quite like to mention something about this, this debate about cost effectiveness. So I think like stepping back, there's two things that I think are really important to bear in mind. One is just the fact that, you know, cost optimality is great and like, you know, modeling of how much things are going to cost and do it, you know, spending money in the right way is, is great.

[00:21:55] is great. But we also have this, this kind of great imperative to, to limit dangerous climate change. We know what we need to do to do that is cutting emissions dramatically this decade. We know that EVs are going to be like a big part of the solution for road transport. You mentioned the likely crucial line from the IPCC and they said basically at least half.

[00:22:15] We're roughly about half of the road transport emissions reductions that we're likely to see on a pathway to 2 degrees is going to be from EVs, even if you take into account like behavior change, you know, urban infrastructure and so on. And so throwing a little bit of money at EVs. to, you know, to, to build that market, even if it is maybe not the most, you know, a hundred percent, most optimal route, that's probably a legitimate choice.

[00:22:40] And I think just the other, the other thing, I mean, Sarah, you already, you already mentioned this, but it's obviously, you know, obviously about, um, about fairness and about who benefits and, you know, You know that ultimately that's a policy choice and that, you know, that you mentioned different ways that you can design subsidies.

[00:22:56] We had subsidies in the UK and we got rid of them basically because, you know, the conservative governments tend, you know, tend to be less, less into that kind of thing. And that, that basically means that, you know, people on lower incomes can't, can't buy new EVs so easily. Um, and so that, you know, that, that is a policy decision.

[00:23:13] It means that they can't access the lower running costs. that they would enjoy if they had an EV. They have to wait for, you know, the sticker price to come down or, you know, perhaps a secondhand market for EVs. Um, so I think those are both important 

[00:23:26] Ed: considerations. To interrupt, could I ask you, with the subsidies, because it's germane to Canada, we've got a conservative prime minister in waiting in Pierre Poiliev, who would very likely yank the subsidy program.

[00:23:37] What did that yanking that subsidy program do to EV sales in the UK? Sales are 

[00:23:42] Simon: increasing worldwide. The number of vehicles, you know, the range of different vehicles that you can buy that, you know, the prices are coming down a little bit still above, you know, combustion engine equivalents. Um, and so I think, you know, they made it, they made a calculation in the UK that, you know, the government decided that they could pull the subsidy without.

[00:23:59] kind of completely crashing the market. And that has been the case. And then since then they have also introduced a ZEV mandate, um, as, as you mentioned, Canada has one too, right? And so we, you know, we're saying this year is the first year that that comes into effect and when, where, you know, manufacturers had been kind of holding back EV sales towards the back end of last year.

[00:24:20] Basically, because they knew they were going to have quotas to fill this year. We're now seeing like, you know, sales increasing again. So, you know, I think that tends to be the model. It's not just with EVs. We've seen it with, you know, solar and other clean technologies where, you know, initially markets driven by subsidies, you know, they have a bit of a crash or they, you know, they kind of slow down a bit when subsidies get pulled, but, you know, with something like that, and with continuing cost reductions, then the market starts picking up again.

[00:24:48] Ed: Great. David, you want to jump back in? I assume it's on subsidies. 

[00:24:51] David: Yeah, I want to, I'm going to kind of, uh, gently push back a bit. I think Simon is, maybe it's a character, I think sort of overstating the case. So I think you more or less said Simon that, well, we know we have to cut very quickly this decade to have a safe climate.

[00:25:06] And so it's okay to. But money and even if it's not cost effective. So of course, first of all, we don't know that that's not what the science says. That's what advocates say, but the science actually says, except there's some kind of cost benefit estimate is significantly higher than that. And that argument can be made for all sorts of different things.

[00:25:22] And I have really a different framing as we've gone from the beginning of the phony war to the real climate action, where we're now spending this 1. 7 percent globally of GDP on clean energy, actually getting serious about cost effectiveness starts to matter more. We can't just sort of. Subsize anything that's expensive.

[00:25:39] So I do think, I think these, these factors start to matter more and to quickly pick up on something Sarah said, yes, you're absolutely right that we're doing, uh, the, the total cost you need to calculate air pollution impacts of both pathways. And obviously it's the, it's the fossil pathway that dominates air pollution.

[00:25:53] Agreed. Whether or not it's so focused on the disadvantage is not clear. Different studies do it different ways. Remember almost most PM and. Ozone is, uh, non-local. 

[00:26:05] Simon: Of course, you know, spending money wisely matters, you know, particularly in, you know, current economic climate. Um, you know, that that's the challenge that all governments are facing, you know, around the world.

[00:26:14] You know, rolling back 10 years, people were having very similar arguments about, you know, high, high. Um, subsidies for solar and that, that seemed like a dumb idea to a lot of people because per ton of carbon, it was expensive, but we wouldn't be where we are with. So, you know, the solar industry, the cost reductions that we've seen, if you know, and that was to the point that Sarah made the paper you pointed to basically, we wouldn't be where we are now with solar if we hadn't.

[00:26:40] Spent a lot of money subsidizing up front, you know, obviously you have to have to look at these things carefully. Um, you know, maybe upfront subsidies aren't, aren't the right way or aren't needed even anymore. But I, you know, I think with that kind of longer term picture, you know, you can justify spending some upfront.

[00:26:55] Um, just on the UK, we had this big debate around whether ZEV mandate, there was some quite strong campaigning from some of the newspapers and from, you know, certain car makers behind the scenes were kind of pushing back on on the ZEV mandate. It had been brought forward. a a a a a a a a a a a a a a phase out to 2030 under Boris Johnson, whatever he is, something like three or four prime ministers ago.

[00:27:20] It's quite hard to keep track here. But under Rishi Sinhak, he basically pushed that back out to 2035, which obviously aligns with places like Canada, but also with the EU. And that was against a backdrop where a lot of people, like the Sun newspaper, I think, was pushing in the mail. They were both pushing for that ZEV mandate to be dropped altogether.

[00:27:39] So we ended up with this slightly messy compromise, but we do, we do now have the ZEV mandate in place. 

[00:27:44] Ed: Sarah, do you mind? Can I throw to you, I'd love to. Just talk about the, so maybe the ZEV mandate, but let's, let's talk about the Canadian government's multi billion dollar bets on investing in EV manufacturing in Canada.

[00:27:59] And something that also may end, we're, we're Pierre Poliev to become Prime Minister. So just, just for context, the Canadian government has made this big bet on the EV supply chain. It's invested 44 billion. In construction support and subsidies in three factories, the Volkswagen battery plant in St.

[00:28:16] Thomas, Ontario, a Northvolt battery plant in suburban Montreal in Quebec, and the Stellantis plant, and that's the one that's garnered all the media attention in Windsor, Ontario. And the government of Canada claims it's seizing first mover advantages for Canada. We're going to leverage our supply critical, minerals to make us an EV battery, EV assembly powerhouse.

[00:28:39] Now, on the first mover's argument, you could say, well, others, other jurisdictions have been at this for a lot longer. And China, in fact, has been manufacturing EV batteries for 20 years. Betting this kind, and we all agree about EVs and the rationale, I guess it's questioning the government of Canada's bet on trying to bring Canada into the world.

[00:28:58] In, in a serious way to the battery manufacturing and the EV assembly game. What, what, what are your thoughts and maybe relative to the opportunity cost of The capital and labor that's going into that investment versus other parts of industrial decarbonization. 

[00:29:13] Sara: There's a bunch of different things that I think that you could view this policy as trying to do.

[00:29:18] And it's a question of, you know, how do you divide it between them? Or which one do you think is the driving factor? The idea of it as a sort of jobs. Policy that is in the green job space, but, you know, really is much more of a domestic manufacturing support, you know, is one way I think given Canada's history in, in, uh, in vehicle manufacturing is one way to really read this.

[00:29:39] A separate one is actually more through the lens of energy security, right? And I think there is a big push to, you know, have a diversification of the supply chain of electric vehicles as they become a more important part of our transportation sector. And I think there's probably some good. Logic behind that to say that, you know, if this is, if, if we are, as David said, going to see, um, light duty vehicle manufacturing become predominantly or become the, uh, become electrified, then there's good reasons that you wouldn't want to have that all happening within only one country.

[00:30:08] And then there is the, the, you know, green kind of element to that of, well, if you're. manufacturing more of these locally, you may be having more, um, more, more sales of them. I think it's interesting to see that it's very similar to what's happening in the U. S. really in terms of the IRA supporting, um, electric vehicle and electric battery manufacturing.

[00:30:25] I don't know that it's so much of an outlier, um, compared to what the U. S. is doing. If I had any quibble about the way that, uh, that the government has. moved forward with these subsidies is that they seem to be much more sort of targeted and through bilateral agreements than an approach where you sort of open up the options and say, here are the rules and here's the support that you can get.

[00:30:46] And you let, you know, any company that's ready to come and do that. I think that would be a better way to go about doing this. Um, I'd also like to see, you know, more ties, um, and, and more work on the mining side, which I think is, is maybe coming to, you know, see what we could do to, to have Alberta be the provider of some of the lithium for those batteries, right?

[00:31:03] I think it's a little bit underexplored in terms of the production that we might see of, of critical minerals coming out of Alberta and, and kind of that, Transformation of the experience and expertise that we have in put crudely extracting things from underground for transportation. That's this is another version of that 

[00:31:20] Ed: great and David to put you on the spot.

[00:31:23] Can you comment more on the U. S. Approach under under the Inflation Reduction Act that Sarah mentioned? Because I know Ira has both rebates or subsidies for purchase, and I think the jury is out on to on whether those are working or not, and then the same kind of production incentives to actually you.

[00:31:40] Bring the Evie supply chain into the U. S. 

[00:31:43] David: My simple and repetitive and boring ads from candidates, man can needs to focus on a few things that could win on for manufacturing. And so I get worried when they're talking about doing, you know, batteries and assembly and these different pieces and lithium in, in Alberta.

[00:31:59] I think each of these things may or may not make sense, but you need to put a lot of effort industrial policy. And if you're really going to win. 

[00:32:06] Ed: Simon, any comments? And you must track it, sort of looking, comparing and contrasting, say, the U. S. approach, the Canadian approach, versus the U. K. approach. We don't know what it's doing on EV manufacturing.

[00:32:17] Simon: I guess two things briefly, if I may, one just, just on the UK approach. I mean, the story that you're, that you've been talking about in terms of what the Canadian government's doing, it sounds very, very familiar, um, from, you know, in terms of what's happening in the UK. There's, um, news just, you know, Just, um, in the last couple of days that, um, that there was going to be like a new gigafactory built near Coventry airport in the West Midlands.

[00:32:42] Um, the government's been, you know, putting a lot of, you know, basically handing bungs to big companies to, to make these kinds of investments and not all of them have worked out. And there was this big, big kind of gigafactory that was going to be called British Vault that was going to make batteries.

[00:32:57] And that's basically fallen through. And I think, you know, similar sort of questions as to whether the UK is indeed well placed to kind of capitalize on these opportunities or not. But I think just kind of stepping back from the UK experience specifically, there's just this really interesting geopolitical moment where China's obviously built up this huge kind of lead in terms of clean technologies more broadly, not just EVs, but, you know, supply chains for, for solar batteries, EVs, and so on.

[00:33:25] They've just been pouring huge amounts of money into this in terms of investing in manufacturing capacity. And, you know, effectively they've created this, this massive kind of glut of clean technology supply. which they're now starting to export. And that's just, you know, creating real kind of ripple effects.

[00:33:41] And that's kind of why you're saying, you know, like the EU announcing investigations into, you know, Chinese subsidies for EVs, for solar and so on. Um, you've, you've got president Biden talking about, you know, concerns about a floods of, of, you know, Chinese cars, you can kind of see why, why they're worried, you know, they're worried about the manufacturing industries for cars in their own countries being severely damaged by.

[00:34:03] really good EVs coming from China very cheaply. From a climate perspective, that might be quite good. It makes it easier for consumers to buy them. But from a kind of an industrial policy, from jobs and, you know, and so on, and from, you know, just diversity and security of supply, you can see why governments might be wanting to drive some of those domestic investments themselves.

[00:34:22] Ed: Simon, you know, you're in the, the media business through Carbon Brief, and it seems like that we're seeing a parallels between the Misinformation and perhaps the disinformation on the EVs. Uh, the parallels versus just climate in general, in terms of, and I had mentioned it earlier, you had mentioned it, you know, we've gone from those, uh, who are often on the other side, on the right side of the political spectrum, who are skeptics and saying the science is wrong, to now, well, okay, it's, it's indisputable, and this is, you know, Part of the part of the fact of living in a changing climate world where in the last 10 years, it's become abundantly obvious to many people, even when you, you know, discount some of it through recency bias that the climate is changing in Canada.

[00:35:08] We've just gone through a record warm winter. But is this evases is a subset of disinformation or misinformation around climate generally? I think it's 

[00:35:19] Simon: pretty clear that, you know, we're in this new phase, uh, you know, a lot of the decarbonisation that's happened to date in places like the UK, but, but, you know, many other countries has kind of taken place a little bit invisibly.

[00:35:30] It's taken place out of sight and out of mind. So, you know, in the UK, it's predominantly we've got rid of coal in the power sector. Coal use for generating electricity is, has really crashed in many developed countries. And people just, you know, they don't necessarily see that. And we're now into this phase where things that are very personal, everyday experience are being targeted, you know, ZEV mandates.

[00:35:51] We're talking about a clean heat market, a mechanism in the UK to drive the up, Take of heat pump and it, it becomes much more, um, controversial I guess, because these are things that people, people are gonna feel it, you know, the effects of very directly in their lives. But I, you know, I guess, I guess the other thing that, um, that I would say is that when my observation about, about how these media narratives are, are running.

[00:36:12] They're very frequently, you know, as you said, kind of take a kernel of truth. So, you know, sure, EVs have a different experience compared to a petrol car. You do need to charge them more frequently or, you know, the upfront cost is high, all of these issues that people identify, but they tend to get blown out of proportion.

[00:36:28] So, I mean, you mentioned the myth buster we did, there were so many different. Things you like, oh, EVs catch on fire? No, actually they're less likely, but they are different. Right? And so basically all of these narratives have have a little bit of a kernel of truth to them, but then they get blown out of all proportion.

[00:36:42] And I think that's, that's kind of the theme that I, that I would say, not just for EVs, but for a lot of climate solutions where a kernel of it, an issue that needs to be solved. A challenge, whether it's integrating, you know, renewables into. the grid, whether it's solving critical mineral shortages or, you know, mining for them.

[00:36:58] These problems are big. They're big challenges. You know, tackling climate change is a big problem, but they're not insurmountable. So they're often painted as if they're sort of insurmountable problems and as if we can just carry on as we are and ignore the climate crisis. 

[00:37:13] Ed: The province of Alberta recently imposed a 200 annual levy on electric vehicles.

[00:37:19] As you can imagine, the knee jerk progressive response has been very negative, but its argument is that, you know, EVs aren't paying a fuel tax, and as a result, they have wear and tear on roads, We need to sort of hit them up elsewhere. Are you seeing that in, in other jurisdictions now? And do you see that as an anti EV measure?

[00:37:38] Simon: We haven't seen something like that in the UK specifically, but we've had a quite a similar, there's, I guess it's kind of a sleeper argument. So, you know, fuel, fuel duty, i. e. a tax on petrol and diesel that people buy when they fuel their cars, that makes up something like 25 to 30 billion pounds worth of tax revenues for the government every year.

[00:37:57] just, just in context. So, you know, what that means, that's basically like half the defense budget or like a quarter of the education budget for the government. So it's, it's big money. And obviously as, as people transition to EVs, that, that money's going to disappear. So we haven't really had a proper debate about it, but people are saying, well, how, how's the government going to solve that?

[00:38:16] Is it going to be road charging? I don't think people have suggested like a kind of flat tax on, on, on EVs. EVs are not without externalities. They cause traffic. They do cause wear and tear on the roads. Simply put, governments can't afford not to have that revenues. So whatever the, the, the sort of the solution is, whether it is linked to, you know, however many miles you drive, you get charged per mile that, you know, that would be the fairest and most efficient solution.

[00:38:40] But, but then that, you know, that has other problems. 

[00:38:43] Sara: Yeah. I mean, I think it's another perfect example of there being a kernel of truth of, you know, we should ensure that there is a fair way of charging EVs. Um, but the approach taken is, is a very ham handed one and one that doesn't seem to even use the data that we have available.

[00:38:57] Right. So one could imagine, uh, a registration fee for EVs that looks at, you know, how much they were driven in the previous year and, and uses that to approximate, uh, mileage. Um, certainly also. You know, as soon as you want to start charging vehicles, um, for sort of the, the externalities that they have, the size of the vehicle overall, uh, whether it's an EV or not, um, certainly has a, has a big impact on, you know, what it means for safety of others on the roads and, and things like that too.

[00:39:25] So, you know, having something that replaces the fuel tax, um, I think makes sense, um, but it needs to be, I think more, uh, you know, have more of a tie to a, how much people are driving and, Be whether or not there's actually the fuel tax in place in Alberta, because we know that if the price of oil goes above 80 a barrel, um, the government has committed to removing those fuel taxes again.

[00:39:48] And certainly also as long as we have a carbon tax on gasoline, um, then there's a, you know, justification for saying, well, you have already created a. And internalizing that externality, but were that to be removed again, then there would be a need to consider kind of those differences there.

[00:40:08] Ed: Great. Okay. Now we're going to get to audience questions and our first questioner is Lyle Tritton or Triton. Sorry. I'm not sure the pronunciation of your name. Go ahead, Lyle. 

[00:40:17] Lyle: Yeah, thanks, Ed. It's Tritton. Um, so I'm in the battery metal space, have been for 30 years working on nickel. Um, but I struggle a little bit with the thesis of replacing an internal combustion engine with an EV, especially here in Alberta.

[00:40:32] Uh, when I run the numbers using carbon brief or using Environment Canada numbers, I get different results, but, you know, effectively throwing away an ICE car to replace it with an EV, you know, I get Equivalency is at, you know, 70 to 150, 000 kilometers. And I drive, you know, about seven or 8, 000 kilometers a year now.

[00:40:55] So, you know, I'm looking at a decade or so, uh, to make an EV pay off and it's carbon debt as a replacement vehicle, I get run over tomorrow. The choice is reasonably clear. Um, just wondering about the thoughts on the analysis of that. Um, you know, and, and the data sources. 

[00:41:15] Simon: I don't know the specific numbers that you're, that you've been using.

[00:41:18] I mean, obviously, you know, as the case, if you've got an existing combustion engine car and you're thinking about replacing it with a new EV, then, you know, then there is a significant kind of carbon debt, if you like, relating to the manufacturing of the battery itself and, and, and the car, you know, again, like a combustion engine cars.

[00:41:35] have, you know, really significant use phase emissions might be something like three, three or four or even five tons per year. And so if your EV is, you know, it's maybe like 10 tons to manufacture it of CO2, then you can see like that, that can get paid off relatively quickly. It depends on the specific circumstances, how many miles you drive and so on.

[00:41:59] I mean, I guess the other thing that's, you know, it's worth mentioning like, you know, obviously not driving saves a lot more carbon than, than buying an ev. But for a lot of people that isn't an option. You know, generally, the way I kind of think of it, if you have to have a car, it's probably better if it's an ev.

[00:42:12] If you're gonna replace your car, I mean, you're gonna replace the car anyway at some point. Should you replace it early with an ev? I mean, maybe that depends, but when you replace the car, it should be an ev 'cause that will carbon significantly. 

[00:42:25] Sara: Add one other thought to on the, on, on kind of what happens when you, when you sell that, uh, internal combustion engine vehicle.

[00:42:31] And in fact, we do have quite a robust, you know, used, uh, vehicle market. And I think that does help the calculation here, right at the end of the day, um, that vehicle doesn't, you know, your, your internal combustion engine vehicle. Especially if it's efficient, doesn't end up getting scrapped. In fact, it goes into the used vehicle supply chain.

[00:42:50] And in the end, you know, you sort of imagine everybody gets a slightly more efficient vehicle and what ends up getting scrapped is usually the oldest, uh, most inefficient vehicle that, you know, somebody would have bought otherwise. So while it's true that sort of, if, and this comes back to David's point about the complexities of life cycle analysis is where you draw that, you know, where you draw your box when it comes to the analysis that you're doing.

[00:43:13] For yourself directly, it may take that seven to 10 years. But I think if you look at the system as a whole, um, it, it can be a, uh, you know, a shorter timeframe. The other thing though, is that it does, it does show why some, uh, governments are also trying to target high mileage vehicles for electrification, right?

[00:43:31] And so there is some logic to saying, you know, coming back to that efficient costs, um, if you want to have a certain group of vehicles that you're really targeting heavily, um, you would want to look at vehicles that are being driven a lot, whether that's. You know, taxis or other types of vehicles as well, too.

[00:43:46] Ed: Hey, Simon, in our rapid fire round, we didn't hit upon range. And I see Ed Brost has a comment and a question here, or actually it's a comment. And he says he's been driving an EV for six years. You see about 20 to 30 percent loss in range in cold weather. Relative to the EPA ratings, but you get much more than what's rated in the summer and suggests it might be helpful if manufacturers gave winter summer range so that consumers could better understand the range issue.

[00:44:15] A knock here that you often in a cold weather climate like Canada. is that, you know, your range drastically decreases more than that 20 to 30 percent that you have to warm your battery, that you have to spend electricity just keeping, keeping that battery warm. And then some of the actual doomsayers say that, well, your car just won't start when you're, you know, it's cold weather.

[00:44:37] So in your 21, You know, myth busting piece. What did you say about range? 

[00:44:42] Simon: We actually didn't really look a great deal at range. I mean, it's, it's clear that the market has shifted dramatically. People are kind of, you know, might imagine the first kind of generation of, of, you know, kind of mainstream electric vehicles, like a Nissan leaf or something that used to have a range of like a hundred miles or 150 miles.

[00:44:59] You know, typically now, you know, a lot of cars that be more like two 50, 300. So sure. You might, you know, you might well, these are of range if it's cold, simply because of warming the battery, warming the car, and just because the way batteries work that, you know, the chemistry of it is affected by the temperature, but that's not to say that, you know, the range is suddenly kind of unusable and I guess the other point about, you know, cold weather and EVs is, you know, one of the markets that has one of the highest penetration rates of EVs in the world is Norway.

[00:45:29] perhaps not quite as extreme as, as, as Canada. I don't, I don't know that, you know, the kind of climate in Norway versus Canada, but it's a pretty cold place and they seem to get on just fine. You know, again, it's, it's one of these, you know, issues of there is a, there's a colonel there, you know, that there was reporting recently about they had some problems with, you know, first kind of generation of electric buses in Norway, um, where they're really, really struggling to cope with, with cold weather conditions.

[00:45:53] They're like, well, we're not giving up on this. We're just going to work out the problems. And, and, you know, that I think is the same for cold weather. 

[00:45:59] David: Just to kind of push back to you on temperatures, Norway is a coastal climate. It's really not very cold compared to interior North America. So it really is a difference.

[00:46:07] I think, I think the, the. I don't see it as a long term challenge and clearly EVs actually probably start better than conventional vehicles is my sense at extreme cold, but the range issue feels to me real in cold temperatures. 

[00:46:20] Ed: Um, question here just about India and what is India doing? We unpacked a bit about China and those who have been there have seen firsthand, uh, what it's doing in terms of electrifying its transport, what it's doing aggressively now and building up its EV manufacturing chain, not just batteries, but actual cars, which we'll see in North America shortly, um, open to anyone.

[00:46:41] And David, I know you're recently in India. What is India doing? I have no idea. The degree of electrification that you see there, 

[00:46:47] David: you don't see much on the streets when I was there in September and three different big cities. Um, certainly lots of policy people are talking about it. There's talk about really pushing it into, uh, the small scooter vehicles, which I think it'd be a very cost effective thing to do.

[00:47:01] Of course, you know, back to the air pollution trade off. If you're, uh, going against diesel vehicles that have very high local pollution, then the, then the benefits of diesel vehicles. of EVs are even larger and health benefit really quite huge. Um, even pretty recently, I saw in India and in Bangladesh when I was there, EVs that were still lead acid battery powered, which kind of stunned me that that was still true.

[00:47:23] I don't really understand the economics of it. 

[00:47:25] Simon: You know, I think people underestimate the extent to which like two and three wheeler electric vehicles are a really significant part of the story in places like India, but in other countries as well, you know, Bloomberg New Energy Finance, when they kind of do the analysis of how much oil demand has, has, is being offset by the EVs that have been deployed already globally.

[00:47:46] I don't know the exact proportion, but a significant proportion of that is, is down to two and three wheelers. And then also like buses, you know, just down to the, you know, the fact that they do high mileage somewhere like China, I think, you know, the vast majority of buses there now are electrified, but actually their market as a whole, I think is getting, getting close to 50%.

[00:48:05] What they call new energy vehicles, which I think involves, um, AVs, but also high, you know, uh, plug in hybrids. But, you know, that's kind of a staggering penetration rate compared to somewhere like the UK. I think we're about 20%. You know, I think people don't realize quite how far ahead they are. 

[00:48:20] Ed: Let's make this our last question.

[00:48:22] We're getting close to the top of the hour and Peter Faloon here is talking about hydrogen versus as a reasonable alternative to electric for some portion of the transportation system. You know, I think of that question, I think of. The CEO of Toyota, who has, uh, recently said that he thinks that, um, EVs will top out at no more, uh, than 30 percent of the market.

[00:48:45] That's Toyota chairman, not CEO, Akio Toyota. And by the way, I should say Japan and Toyota have bet fairly big on the hydrogen economy. As has Germany, in terms of its investment in hydrogen fueling infrastructure. But we no longer see it as any kind of, in any credible discussion about personal transportation.

[00:49:04] So I'll open it up to all of you. Simon, David, Sarah, what is the role of hydrogen? Where could it be used to help decarbonize transportation? 

[00:49:12] David: I'll jump in. This is stuff I put a lot of time into 20 years ago. I think if you think the whole transportation structure and you think where does hydrogen really make sense, it makes sense in some places where you're substituting for very dirty fuels, where the volumetric constraint that hydrogen is a low density gas doesn't matter that much, and where you're going from major places that actually have hydrogen already there.

[00:49:33] And one of the answers we thought about very seriously was international shipping. There's some deep reasons why that might make sense. It's also conceivable in aircraft where you get the giant benefit of the weight benefit that really doesn't play out that much anywhere else. I think overall hydrogen for light duty vehicles feels to me extraordinarily unlikely now, particularly as.

[00:49:52] EVs really come in, you know, it's so hard to build out a light duty refueling infrastructure, and now it's going to be even harder as gasoline goes down and EVs come up. You'd have to get to a point where you had enough hydrogen infrastructure and local hydrogen is pretty cost and environmentally inefficient.

[00:50:08] So I just don't see a version of that for light duty vehicles. I do think it might happen elsewhere in the transportation system. Heavy off road vehicles as well for mining, for example. 

[00:50:17] Sara: I'm with you, David. I mean, I think one of the parts and I'll just point to this specific one is the infrastructure, right?

[00:50:23] And we, as we talked about, we hear so much about how it's going to be so hard to build out an EV charging infrastructure, despite the fact that we already have the fuel, if you want the electricity running all over our, uh, you know, countries and, and wherever we're going. And so, you know, imagine doing that for a fuel that you don't have sort of currently circulating.

[00:50:43] Simon: agree with all of that and just to put some some numbers on this as of last year there were there were less than a hundred thousand fuel cell electric vehicles on the road um hydrogen fueled vehicles and you know i think we're up to sort of 15 or 20 million evs so just in terms of what's actually happening i mean toyota historically has has made a big you know big big big push and a big bet on hydrogen vehicles, but I just don't see it happening.

[00:51:08] And I think, you know, the, the kind of the space where it, it might make sense is shrinking all the time as, you know, in terms of like heavy duty trucks, even, you know, seeing big moves into electrification there. Um, so I, you know, I think it may, it may be a niche solution in some places, but in general, I agree completely with what Sarah and David said.

[00:51:28] Ed: Yeah. And one of those niche area assignments, we may see it actually on the rails here, uh, as part of rolling stock, a railway company, Canadian Pacific is committed to piloting hydrogen engines to replace diesel engines. Thanks for listening to Energy vs. Climate. The show is created by David Keith, Sarah Hastings Simon and me, Ed Whittingham, and produced by Amit Tandon, with help from Crystal Hickey, Serena Gibson, and Talia Grinnell.

[00:51:55] Our title and show music is The Wind Up by Brian Lipps. This season of Energy vs. Climate is produced with support from the University of Calgary's Office of the Vice President, Research, and the University's Global Research Initiative. Further support comes from the Trache Family Foundation, the North Family Foundation, I'm going to leave it back to you.

[00:52:13] for the great discussion and our generous listeners sign up for updates and exclusive webinar access at energy versus climate. com and review on rate us on your favorite podcast platform. This helps new listeners to find the show. We'll be back in early April with a special interview with Dr. Mark Jacquard about carbon taxes in Canada, which has been a very hot topic of late.

[00:52:34] See you then.