Ask EvC Anything 2025 | David Keith, Sara Hastings-Simon, and Ed Whittingham

You asked — David, Sara, and Ed answered.

We're wrapping up the year with our annual Ask EvC Anything episode, touching on topics that pair well with New Year's bubbly: We talk about whether Canada’s climate targets are quietly slipping out of reach, the practicalities and prospects of direct air capture, what a net zero electricity grid in Alberta might actually look like by 2050, whether shiny new materials like metal organic frameworks are breakthrough solutions or just the latest carbon hype cycle, and why we call the show Energy vs Climate. 

Reference

(30:37) Nobel Prize 2025: Award-winning chemistry for a cleaner planet

About Your Co-Hosts:

David Keith is Professor and Founding Faculty Director, Climate Systems Engineering Initiative at the University of Chicago. He is the founder of Carbon Engineering and was formerly a professor at Harvard University and the University of Calgary. He splits his time between Canmore and Chicago.

Sara Hastings-Simon studies energy transitions at the intersection of policy, business, and technology. She’s a policy wonk, a physicist turned management consultant, and a professor at the University of Calgary where she teaches in the Energy Science program, and co-leads the Net Zero Electricity Research Initiative. She has a particular interest in the mid-transition.

Ed Whittingham isn’t a physicist but is a passionate environmental professional. He is the founder of Advance Carbon Removal, a coalition advancing demand side solutions for carbon removal in Canada. He is also the former CEO of the Pembina Institute, Canada’s widely respected energy/environment NGO. His op-eds have been published in newspapers and magazines across Canada and internationally.

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Produced by Amit Tandon & Bespoke Podcasts

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Transcript

Ed Whittingham: Amit, I realized I've got this wonderful mic on my lap and I wasn't running voice memos 

David Keith: Last time it was me. but of course it could be me as well this time.

Ed Whittingham: I, I, I had to resist urge to say I pulled to David.

[Laughter]

David Keith: Go Ed yourself. 

[Laughter]

[Intro music]

Ed Whittingham: Hi, I'm Ed Whittingham and you're listening to Energy Versus Climate, the show where my co-host, David, Keith, Sara Hastings-Simon and I argue in good faith about energy climate and the uncomfortable space where physics meets politics. We're back with our annual Ask Us Anything episode based on questions from you, our listeners, we talk about whether Canada's climate targets are quietly slipping out of reach, the practicalities and prospects of direct air capture.

What a net zero electricity grid in Alberta might actually look like by 2050, and whether shiny new materials like metal organic frameworks or breakthrough solutions, or just the latest carbon hype cycle. We also talk about why we call the show Energy versus Climate. Thanks to all of you who submit a questions, and sorry that we couldn't get to all of them.

Now here's the show.

Hey, David and Sara. It's really nice to be in person. 

Sara Hastings-Simon: It's great. It's freaking me out. So you guys here in person. I mean, it's really nice to be with you in person, but it's weird to record a show in person, I be honest. 

David Keith: So is this like, I'd really rather live in my hole mag guy and talk to nobody, or I'd really rather not talk to you two.

Sara Hastings-Simon: No, it's, it's, it is like great to be talking to you guys when we were chatting before, but it's, I, I find it like disorienting to, anyway. 

Ed Whittingham: We're recording just to timestamp this Thursday, December 18th, 2025. And I will say, this is the day we got news that the independent board of the Kennedy Center voted to rename the Kennedy Center to the Trump Kennedy Center.

All the independent. 

David Keith: Big shock. Big shock. But actually I am surprised. I, I thought they were gonna name it something like. His greatest genius Trump. The wonderful, the tremendous, the amazing Kennedy Center. 

Ed Whittingham: Yeah. Well, I'd say that board has all the independence of a North Korean election certification board.

Um, it is almost a year ago to the day that David and I recorded 2020 fours, uh, annual ask us anything show, but it is much better as a threesome than the twosome. That's been the highlight. Leave, see, highlight of the year for me. Sara's getting you back. 

Sara Hastings-Simon: It's definitely much more fun than I was having last year at this time.

Yeah. 

Ed Whittingham: Okay. Well, we asked for questions and listeners responded. So many good questions. Hard to choose, like trying to choose a favorite child, but we did so nonetheless. The first one, and I'll say throughout the show, if I butcher last names pronunciations, forgive me, Robert Tesson, and he asks, will the minimum industrial carbon price for carbon in the Alberta Canada, MOU, which side note we did a whole show on.

Still make it possible for Canada to achieve its carbon emission targets, or is all hope lost leading the witness a little bit. Sara, you government, uh, the government Canada came out with a reform yesterday called the 2025 Progress Report on the 2030 emissions reduction plan. You looked at it, what do you have to say?

Sara Hastings-Simon: Uh, not great news. Uh, maybe unsurprising. So this is it. Interestingly, it came out with very little fanfare or, or I missed it completely, but, but this is a progress report. That's the second progress report that the government of Canada. Is publishing under its Canadian Net Zero Emissions Accountability Act.

So this is basically part of the 2030, uh, emissions reduction plan was not only are we gonna do all this stuff we in Canada, but we're actually going to write these, um, regular progress reports to say whether or not we've. Done them. Um, and so the timing of this one, um, is a little tricky in that obviously it was written and a lot of the analysis must have been done before the recent MOU, but of, of course, it's come out since the MOU.

Um, but the high level is that the report is showing that the current policies will not deliver the results, um, needed to achieve the 2030 or 2035 target. So, surprise, surprise, big to see that one coming. What is it? And, uh, if we, if we say this is a report card, it's like, does not meet expectations, uh, grade kind of thing.

Um, so, you know, emissions, you know, are, are coming down, um, but they're not coming down nearly fast enough and there is a big gap, uh, to the 2030 target. And I think it's probably fair to say, you know, given we, I won't repeat all the story with MOU, but given that we don't actually have a. Plan for when we're gonna get to $130, uh, with the, the MOU, between the federal government and, and Alberta.

Um, you know, I think that probably puts us even more off track than this report has. So, uh, I guess, yeah, Canada misses another climate. Target water is wet. 

Ed Whittingham: And I guess one of those things, you know, if you squint hard, caulk an eye and really peer. You might be see able to see the outlines of Canada getting into a target if it really had a sheep, a steep, sharp carbon price.

And David, I know you've talked about for many years, saying you could replace a lot of those pancakes. And the pancakes stacks I've talked about. If you get to that steep, sharp carbon price, I'd say that Rick Smith notes 'cause the head of the Canadian Climate Institute and he had a response out. And he said in the coming months, the federal government should follow up on the Canada, Alberta, MOU, with final plans for strengthening industrial carbon pricing and rigorous equivalency agreements on methane and clean electricity.

I think he's being diplomatic, but David, what do you think? 

David Keith: I think one thing, this is sort step way back is it's harder than for other countries in some ways for Canada to do this because a lot of other countries, a typical western country, had much higher emissions electricity sector and, and as it happened, the wonder of cheap solar and wind meant that that was really the easiest place to cut.

And Canada didn't have as much to cut because our electricity sector with so much hydro was comparatively low carbon to begin with. And so it means that the sort of relative. Ease of making quick progress was, was in some ways, uh, uh, less than other places. 

Ed Whittingham: I mean, is that kind of emissions reduction target by that date?

Is it like green dreaming in green technicolor? Like did Canada ever have a chance of actually achieving that target? 

David Keith: I felt the political chance of it happening, it was very low. I didn't think it was likely to happen. I mean, could it happen in principle with some really big government push? Yes, I think that's possible.

It's technically possible. 

Sara Hastings-Simon: I mean, I think the political part, I'm, I'm looking right now at the, um, emissions changes that, uh, four 40 breaks down. So this is this project from the Canadian Climate Institute, um, for folks that like looking at graphs and data, it's, it does a really good job. Um, but basically, I mean, we did, despite the fact that, of course, Canada's overall electricity sector was quite clean, relatively speaking.

If you go back to 2005, there was quite still a significant change in emissions, right? So over 60 megatons, um, change, uh, decrease from 22 from 2005 to 2024. Of course, the elephant in the room is that the oil sands increase over that time period was just shy of. Of 60. You can talk a lot about why that is.

And of course the growth of the oil stands over that time was large, as you were saying. Taking a step back, I mean this sort of underscores the kinds of debates that you hear about in general, I think within like the U-N-F-C-C-C in this whole process of, you know, is it about effort or results and, and you know, where exactly you pick the starting time matters a lot and all these kinds of things.

Um, so to abstract from the, you know, target itself, I think Canada's. You know, actually made good progress in some areas like electricity, probably transportation is a bit flat. And of course the big adoption of people driving around bigger cars has not helped that during that time. Um, but of, but then the oil production is, is kind of, you know, clearly what is, uh, adding rather than subtracting to our missions over that time period.

Yeah. 

Ed Whittingham: Yeah. And, and at the risk of being a negative Nelly, or let's say a negative Ned, uh, it's like with the whole MOU and it's focus on essentially boosting the fossil fuel industry, it seems it's an acknowledgement or some would say a capitulation to the current nature of the Canadian economy. The current nature of the Canadian economy is not based on super clusters.

It's not based on solar manufacturing. It's solely based on natural resources. And if anything that MOU doubles down. On that basis, rather than saying, okay, well here's what we're gonna do to try to create economic diversification, economic diversification away from our, as we said before, the crack house in the basement of a trading partner.

But not really diversification in terms of our economy. 

David Keith: But in fairness, the MOU is an MOU with Alberta. So it's an inherently, I mean, Alberta is the fossil fuel capital. So it's, I think the question of whether Canada can succeed in being competitive in other places, in other ways is. For other debates about how this government is doing.

But the point is, is that I think you, you, you can't blame that the MOU on not doing that, that's not his job. 

Ed Whittingham: Yeah. Yeah. That's fair. Fair. Good point. Uh, and that will be for another debate and in fact, uh, sneak preview. We've got a live show coming up January 27th, 2026 in Calgary, the Energy Transition Center, and we're gonna talk about Alberta's energy transition and what the future economy of Alberta looks like.

Uh, it should be a fun show. Alright, question number two. For Bruce Winter, Bruce is looking for a reality check on technologies to remove carbon dioxide from the air. David, I think it's gonna be up your alley. Uh, studies find that many climate stabilization plans are based on questionable assumptions about the future costs and deployment of, and he puts some quotes here, direct air capture and therefore may not bring about promised reductions, and then he links to an MIT study.

That looks like the, the title is Reality Check Tech to Remove Carbon Dioxide from the Air. David, your thoughts? 

David Keith: Yeah, I think there's so much to say here. Um, um, let's wind this back to Paris a little bit. So the Paris Agreement, you know, this 1.5 or two goal, and people who do these integrated assessment models that are attempting to say how economies might produce emissions.

Um. Couldn't really have those models sensibly meet the Paris. Certainly not 1.5 gold. Even the two gold was hard unless they did a huge amount of negative emissions. And then there became a kind of industry, these models showing huge amounts of negative emissions, like, um, 10 gigatons a year or something, or near that by 2050, uh, as a way to meet the goal.

And that didn't come from any kind of thoughtful strategic planning or serious bottom up technology analysis. It came because people. Tweak those models to do that. Most of the models at that point didn't necessarily do a dak. They had biomass with capture and nothing else in the early versions of the models.

And that's kind of how the carbon removal kind of current hype cycle GU started and it made carbon removals happen on the map because then, uh, lots of educated people went around saying, we must have. 10 gigatons or name your num number of carbon removal by 2050 in order to do X. Basically to do a Paris compliant thing, which to be clear wasn't even clearly compliant with the original thing.

'cause all this assumes overshoot and it's not clear the original wording meant that, I mean, you know, if you kid is not cleaning up the room the way you say. And, and you say you kind of redefine the baseline and say, well, you just have to have the average room cleaner in two weeks. It's not clear that you're really being a good parent or doesn't need much.

So, so I, I think there's a lot of assumptions here that don't make sense. So do I believe those studies? No, not at all. I think the whole industry of those things is not particularly useful. Um, I think it is a simple, basic fact of. Climate science that if you at any point want the long-term temperature to be lower than it is now, you have to remove carbon from the atmosphere.

Full stop. And to me, we can argue, and there's lots of room for political argument about what the right timing is, but it doesn't make sense to actually use. Really large scale carbon removal until emissions are down a long way from their peak. By what I mean by long way, I'll say like two thirds. So when emissions are down, kind of two thirds from their peak would be to me, kind of where you might start, really large scale implementation of carbon removal.

So I'm totally happy to see lots of. Playing around with carbon removal for that 'cause. The only way we learn what its costs are, what's environmental impacts are. We develop it is to actually go try. But to me go try should mean something of order one or a few percent of the amount of money we're spending on clean energy.

Mm-hmm. So to me that's the real choice we're making is how much money should flow to carbon removal compared to clean energy. And my view would be a few percent. That is a pretty small amount. And in fact the amount that's now flowing is less than that. Mm-hmm. And so. In terms of what's actually happening on the ground, I don't see a problem, 

Ed Whittingham: but it's, what you said was a bit unintuitive, so I just had to double click on it because you said we shouldn't actually deploy large scale carbon removal until emissions have peaked and we're down to two thirds of what they were at peak.

If, and this is a big if, and I acknowledge it's not the case. If you could declare D, deploy large scale carbon removal. Now, if governments recognize that, say, okay, treating the areas the same as treating water and we're just gonna spend public money on it, why would you not do that today? 

David Keith: Well, if it, if it was cheaper.

I mean, all this is assuming something about cost. If it was really true that there was some lower environmental impact. Uh, the carbon removal technology that could go at $50 a ton, at 50 gigatons, then the answer is, yeah, we should actually, if all you care about is climate, then the answer is you should let fossil fuels keep going for a while and just do that.

If it's a cheaper way to mitigate, fine, but there isn't such a thing. So if in fact, you know, carbon removal is gonna be over a hundred dollars a ton and there are. A complicated set of environmental trade offs, and we don't know exactly how quickly it will go, then I think the answer is there's no, why would we do it at scale now when we could just cut emissions at scale?

Sara Hastings-Simon: Yeah, I mean, you sort of have a limited amount of money and attention and all these things, and it's, it's not where it should go at the present time. And I think, I mean, I take your point that that's not, when it comes to carbon removal, I think that isn't really the, the risk that there isn't that, that there's all this money flowing into it.

And actually to some extent, I don't know if it's. Because of my, where we sit and, and how the discussion is. But I don't feel that I hear quite as much, uh, talk about carbon removal as kind of acting as a delay to doing other things as I do with CCS one. One reason for that would be just to say, well, it's because, um, you know, CCS is a little bit technologically closer than, than carbon removal, but I actually think.

And I hadn't really thought this through before, so I we'll see if I agree with what I say when I get to the end of it, but, but I think it has because it is inherently not tied to a specific industry and a specific source of carbon. I. The, the kind of dynamics around it are still a little bit different, right?

Like, whereas I do think that CCS industrial CCS, and you know, I'll, I'll specifically point to the oil sands, has been used as a way to delay other action on emission reductions. This promise that, okay, we're going to have CCS, we're going to do that at some, you know, future date, we promise we're getting there.

And that kind of pushes the. That's used to push out, um, arguments to do things specifically about the oils hands. I think that happens some. There's a risk of that happening, some with, with, uh, direct removals, but it's a little bit lower because it's not so targeted at a specific industry. So it's kind of like you.

I'm sure there are some people out there who are saying, well, we should just, you know, we don't need to, to clean up the electricity grid or adopt EVs. 'cause we can do direct removal. But it doesn't, the argument doesn't hang quite as, as neatly. I don't know if you, 

David Keith: I I agree. It's, it's, there's something different about it.

Um, maybe I'm gonna circle back to some other part of the question. I think, I think the prospects for removing carbon to me look better than they did a while ago. And I think it's really, I think it's very likely that there are. Going to be some technologies that really could be used at many gigatons a year with pretty low environmental impacts and costs that are out, you know, a hundred dollars a ton ish.

I think that's a likely thing where I would most of all point to, to direct air capture or, um, open Ocean Knuck, Alinity, or, or. Or other alkalinity related things. And certainly I think B is not so scalable. It's obviously doable. So I think there's enough of these things that are doable that I think it is a thing that we humans could do and I really hope we will do.

'cause I'd like to see not giant amounts of climate change, thousands of years in the future. 

Ed Whittingham: And I, I've heard you say it before, it's one of two ways to actually cool the planet. Neuro lifetime carving, removal. And just on the Becks note, the federal government just announced its intention to develop a protocol and offsets protocol for Becks.

The first one was Dak Dak is often in the og in the CDR world. Next step is Becks. To your point, why is carbon removal not on the receiving end to the same degree that CCUS is as a delay tactic? And I think it comes down to the oil and gas industry has not. Taken carbon removal like a bone and run with it.

And when I watch hockey night in Canada on Saturday, I don't see advertisements. They're all electronics, CTI, but I, I don't see advertisements on the boards for carbon removal companies. The way I see pathways, you know, there is a better way we're, you know, removing emissions and all these things. There's just this constant bombardment.

But maybe a question back to both of you, then we'll move on to the next question. So I attended a carbon renewable conference in London in late October, and I saw Robert or Hoagland speak there. He's the head of C-D-R-F-Y-I and he rolled out some pretty silvering stats. And the stats being buyers are flatlined in the sector.

Investment is down. Um. There's one buyer in particular, Microsoft and Bill Gates that is sort of hoovering up everything but the next buyer frontier, whom David and I know is an order of magnitude less, and the next buyer after that is one order of magnitude less than that, and it looks like we've had this Cambrian explosion of carbon removal companies in 2026.

We're going to experience a die off, I think. So to your point, David, about, you know, we should be spending, let's say a percent on it and it needs to blossom later. As a government, what do you do if you're gonna see this big die of event? How much do you spend to keep the sector healthy? 

David Keith: Well, I don't think, I don't think the startups were particularly healthy.

I think, I think, I think if you really wanted to do this, you do something pretty different. You need something that really sets some pretty clear goals, including environmental goals and, uh, has, has, um, uses. Experts and obviously issues about conflicts of interest and how to manage it to make some real decisions about what things are likely to be scalable and only support those things that are scalable.

Because what's happened is through this voluntary market, a whole bunch of us been funded. That is really unscalable. I don't think there's a generic CDO company. I think a lot of these things were totally well-intentioned people working hard, but have essentially zero chance to be part of the big picture things that are likely to happen.

And so I think it needs a shake up, but it needs to be done differently. 

Sara Hastings-Simon: Yeah. And I think it's not just the technology, but also the kind of governance around it. Right? So, uh, I know Dr. Emily Gruber has an interesting paper that kind of proposes what a good like public governance for this technology would look like.

Um, but I do think it's fundamentally challenging to imagine it happening at scale. Not so much from the tech side, but just from the governance and who pays for it side. Right. So it's sort of the flip side of what I was saying, where like, CCS. You know, at least in theory in principle one would imagine you can tie to the emitters as the one who should be paying for the CCS.

Of course, as we see happening in Canada, there's a lot of pushback against that. And, and those emitters want the federal government to pay for essentially all of it. But, but at least there's some sort of logic you can kind of hang your hat on. I think the real challenge to me when it comes to things like, uh, like.

Stack or, or, or Becks or others, is you're basically just talking about a cost without much in the way of a, you know, useful product at the end, aside from the useful product of, you know, very useful in terms of cooling the world, but not useful in a, in a local way. And so I guess I just find it very hard to wrap my head around the idea.

You know, we, we see the pushback that we're getting to, to climate. Who's gonna pay for it? And, and the, and I particularly would push back this idea that, you know, Canada could be the place where all of the carbon direct removal happens. Because in so much as, or where a lot of it happens, because in so much as governments actually around the world want to put money into.

Doing, uh, direct removal, they're going to want to have at least some kind of local activity that goes along with it. In many cases, Canada 

David Keith: doesn't have have the right circumstances. So for a bunch of these things, they're really energy intensive. And so then you want to be in really sunny places, not in Canada.

Yeah, yeah. Or, and, and if you want, and for enhanced rock weathering, it's really about tropical soils in, in war places, again, for a different reason. Um, and even for Becks, the proximity forest isn't that high. So yeah, sure. I understand. 

Sara Hastings-Simon: I'm not arguing that it should be here, but I'm saying there are many people out there saying this could be Canada's big, you know, industry, but 

David Keith: the fact that people say that shows how completely disconnected from reality people are.

I mean, because it's just laughable. I think nobody. Who actually knows anything, presumably is saying that that's not, 

Sara Hastings-Simon: I, I'll let you take that up with them, but I, but my, my concern is even, well, again, like it's, there's the technological concern, but I think there's also the like sort of global governance, the way that you think of this.

If you think that all the governments in the world are gonna put money into some other country to do removal. Yeah. You know, to me it's clear that as much as is technically and, and kind of, uh, the. You know, having the right conditions possible, you're gonna want it to happen in your own country. If you're paying for it, you're not gonna wanna send your money overseas.

Ed Whittingham: But, but are you saying you don't believe in Article six? You don't believe in, in any kind of international transactions around carbon credits? Because the first carbon removal transaction has happened with Switzerland and I. Think Norway. I know the Klein Phi was the one that 

Sara Hastings-Simon: Yeah. I don't believe it at, at scale.

Right. I, I just don't believe, you know, living now through what's happened in, in Canada and the complete unwillingness of the Canadian government to actually force the oil and gas sector to spend real money on, you know, doing CCS or something like that, the, the political impossibility of that. I think when push comes to shove.

Occasionally you have countries that are willing to go out a little bit ahead and spend some money like Germany with the solar panels, but it always has also some kind of like self-serving manufacturing thing as 

David Keith: well. Gonna push back a little bit. Lots of countries we're spending close to 1% of GDP on foreign.

That's obviously chain, but you can go back and forth. And that was stable for decades and, and that, uh, uh, there were some kickbacks and ways that local companies benefited. But fundamentally that's an example. And, and even, you know, the pushback also on climate, like I, I, um, if, if. Truly, there was a scientific announcement tomorrow that said there was no client problem, just zero.

And so there was no incentive and we were purely going. I mean, I think solar and electric vehicles will keep chugging along, but definitely not as quickly. I do think that a big part, I mean, gas is pretty cheap and abundant and it's easy to store it, easy to move around. I think in a world where, so I think the question is what fraction of all the current action on decarbonization is really.

About just people buying electricity or is it because of climate and I think the, what do you think? Yeah, no, that's fair. That that's fair. Dollars on fleet energy. What fraction of that would happen if the climate fell, if it was not about, I'm 

Ed Whittingham: hearing you're nodding against these international translations like Article six in principle, but what you're talking sounds like specific Canada.

Because in different industries and, and we know the oil and gas sector and every cop rolls around and I used to get a call from an an, uh, oil and gas industry executive, or CEO saying, ed, we want to go out and publicly stump for article six credits for Canada's clean natural gas and exporting that to That's not get started to, uh, yeah, but but, but you're not against it in principle.

Yeah. You just don't think it's gonna apply in this. No. 

Sara Hastings-Simon: I mean, I think, I think, David, you put the question in a good way, right? Which is what percent of global GDP do. Does wanna imagine going into this, right? Because Yeah, I'm, I, it's overly pe pessimistic to say that people are unwilling to spend any money towards this.

I guess I am hesitant to bring up what's going on in the us but like, of course right now, one sees all of the dismantling of a lot of, you know, foreign aid and all these kinds of things. So I'm sure that also colors my view of like how much people are willing to, to see happen. So, yeah, I mean. I think it, I think it has to be in that like low, like pretty low single digits or less than a, you know, so what percent of the actual spending today is sort of, if I had to pick a number, yeah, I would, I would still pick like in the 10 to 20%.

Right. I, I think that the economy, no, no, no. Of, of the climate spending today, that's like somehow really about just the global good of the climate versus the manufacturing because. And, and that's what, that's what CDR has. Uniquely challenging in the terms that it doesn't, you know, you take an EV for example, okay, maybe an EV is now more expensive, but there's all kind of ways to imagine you could get to a world where it would be cheaper and it might be, you know, better, uh, geopolitically or it might actually be a better product at the end of the day not to be burning these things, right.

You have not saying we're there now, but there's some potential pathway. CDR is always gonna just be a. Cost on top of what you're doing otherwise. Same with, but yeah, how can you get it cheap enough? I guess that's the question. That's 

David Keith: true. But you're really keen on batteries and electric stuff, even in Alberta, and I think if you really took away.

Well, there was some reason why we just like had some magic, infinitely cheap CDR, so there was no climate issue. Yeah. Uh, given the actual cost of, of energy, of, of gas in Alberta and how sunny it is and how cold it is, I don't think there'd be much rational reason to put much money into solar wood than Alberta.

Ed Whittingham: And I wonder about heat pumps. Yeah. In the same way. Yeah. But the, to your point, with carbon removal, and it's like CCUS, you're producing a product that no one wants. You have to pay to produce a product. Product you have to pay to transport the product. You have to pay to store the product. So the only way it works is if you have some sort of climate regime and you have, uh, benevolent or enlightened companies or governments that get it.

But fundamentally, you're not gonna see that mass deployment until you have some sort of carbon pricing regime that actually incentivizes it. So with a carbon pricing, and going back to our earlier discussion, if you get to $130 effective carbon price, like real. Not nameplate like real. Then you get some of these projects over the hurdle, and I should assume you're not opposed to that because you're not spending public money on that.

You're just letting the market. 

Sara Hastings-Simon: No, no, that I'm not opposed to at all. That's where then, actually, that's why I have. I'm very pessimistic today. That's why I have a lot of, 

Ed Whittingham: because you're in person with that, you bring out the worst in you. 

Sara Hastings-Simon: That's why I have a lot of pessimism about the ability to actually get to the $130, uh, you know, real carbon price that, that.

Is really being paid. But, but, but I, I guess I can borrow some optimism from you that, you know, there is foreign aid that does happen and stuff, so it's probably, it's a, it's a question of the amounts, not the 

David Keith: lots of pollution regulations have had effectively high costs. And I mean, just to push back on the kind of assumption that carbon removal is so expensive.

I mean, since people can, if there's, the video was actually shown, people can see my fancy windows that are half a wat per square meter per degree, c. The, the carbon avoided cost of those windows compared to kind of windows that would look pretty nice and be pretty good is like, I've order a thousand bucks a ton.

Carbon dioxide. I didn't make it up. We did the calculation. Mm-hmm. And, and uh, you know, I have an electric vehicle I'm really happy with. But, um, I think that's many hundreds of dollars a ton today for real. And I think if you can really remove, so one answer would be if you could really remove carbon today at really large scale with low environmental impact for say 200, why are you just doing that?

Sara Hastings-Simon: Yeah, no, that's true. That's probably goes back to a bigger conversation of, you know, we should also all be paying more taxes and, you know, doing more social good things collectively via the government. And, 

Ed Whittingham: and even at today's high prices, there's data suggests that you care about the aviation industry and my beef is not too, not about emissions from the aviation industry.

My beef. Too few people care about it then insurance. And instead of changing our fuel infrastructure or sustainable aviation fuel, uh, it is actually cheaper to supply carbon removal. 

David Keith: I think. I think the big question is what the actual costs are. So right now there aren't things that are low environmental impact, certainly work and are even under 200, not as of today, but I think, I think it's quite plausible there will be.

Mike. 

Sara Hastings-Simon: Yeah, yeah. No, and I should say, I mean, despite all the skepticism, I actually am doing research on, uh, how to do cost reductions and carbon removal too. So I, yeah. 

Ed Whittingham: More to come, we kind of actually rerun the show. We actually did a full show on tar removal. It was a live show, but skip to parrot some of these things.

Okay. I'm gonna skip, I'm gonna go actually to the metal organic frameworks question. So this is from Aviv Freed. Hi, EBC. I recently came across an article about the winners of the 2025 Nobel Prize in chemistry and was really intrigued to learn about metal organic frameworks or musts. Seems like this could be a fantastic option for carbon capture and removal, and I was surprised I hadn't heard about it before.

Have you talked about your podcast? Answer is no. I assume David will have a lot of insight about this and, uh, of links to a short article that we will put in our show notes. 

David Keith: I'll keep it quick. So these are extremely fancy, special, weird compounds that have kind of a very porous and can be chemically selective, and they produced a whole lot of exciting chemistry that gets published in science and nature and wins Nobel prizes.

They're very little used in the real world now. People have been talking about them for carbon removal for more than a decade. I think closer to 15 years. And I think it's very unlikely they'll be useful, or at least not for a very long time. And I think one way to think about it, as you think about kind of the way industry works, things start with niches where very high purity specialized is worth paying a lot of money for.

So for drug purification or specialty chemical processes where you're need to purify something really well with something, you're paying a thousand thousands of dollars a time for a hundred dollars a kilo for, um. And large scale carbon removal or carbon capture is very much a commodity process on dirty streams.

And I think it's gonna be a very long time before until something like mots are useful, if ever. 

Sara Hastings-Simon: Don't give up on ever though, right? Like when was the, when was the Nobel Prize on, uh, the photo electric effect? 19, early 19 hundreds. Yeah, well said. 

David Keith: Technological 

Sara Hastings-Simon: improvements will 

David Keith: keep happening. No, that, that's totally fair.

Agreed. 

Sara Hastings-Simon: Uh, no, I think it's a nice example of that, right? Yeah. There's a 

David Keith: set of other things, but I think that's the point, is that that, that the adoption curves will find the really high value niches first. And when people used to keep coming to us, say carbon engineering, say, you know, this moths will work great for dry hair capture.

My answer is like, when it's working really great for some much easier obligation, which is where people will pay. A hundred times X, then I'll start to get interested. It's not even there yet. 

Ed Whittingham: Yeah. Okay. This question is from Peter Alexander and Sara will give you first crack at it. Assuming a government in Alberta is motivated to achieve a net zero target, what do you think the electrical grid might look like by 2050?

And that's relative share of wind, solar, batteries, hydro, geothermal, biomass, renewable gas, nuclear. 

Sara Hastings-Simon: So in Alberta, the biggest challenge to getting to high level, to high, very, very high levels, you know, over 80% renewables is the fact that we're so far north. And so basically solar, which, you know, works really well, has a lot of seasonality here.

Uh, so, you know, there are many months where the sun goes. You know, it doesn't shine for very much of the day, and when it is shining, it's shining at a, a strong angle. So it's not bringing as much energy to, uh, to earth. Um, and so that doesn't mean by the way that I think solar is not useful in Alberta.

It's, it's good as a, as a mix. But, but my answer to, you know, how do we get to decarbonize grid? I think it's has to start from that point. Because in a lot of other parts of the world, I think the answer would be you have a lot of solar, a lot of batteries. Some other stuff, and I think it looks slightly different here in Alberta, you still have, you know, a fair amount of solar that gets used at certain times.

You have a lot of wind, um, you have some, certainly some batteries that are doing kind of day to day or maybe even week to week. Um, and then you have transmission lines between here and BC and you're doing a lot of seasonal balancing with, um, with bc. Um, obviously it's not a hundred percent decarbonized, but I will mention that, you know.

I think sometimes we end up too focused on exactly getting to a hundred percent as a close as opposed to close to a hundred percent. So, you know, one could also imagine an electricity grid in Alberta that uses some kind of combustible fuel for some few. You know, we're talking about like a week or a couple days, maybe in February.

Um, where, where you need to have that or have it as a backup. Um, but essentially that, you know, a lot, a lot more wind and solar, uh, a lot more earth. Storage, a lot of transmission, a lot of, um, demand response and, and kind of balancing, uh, in homes and things like that. And, and maybe a bit of, you know, some kind of combustion or hydrogen or whatever, but at some level where it doesn't become super important.

So 

David Keith: obvious question that wasn't on your list. I mean, so over in China we're building gigawatt scale reactors, uh, for a couple thousand bucks at kw and they work. Um, this is a thing humans know how to do. Albertans are good at constructing big, complicated projects people don't like. We've got the EPC, we've got the engineering.

Why not build some. 

Sara Hastings-Simon: So actually, and I realize I left out geothermal, I actually think we probably will see some geothermal here. Too. Clear? I should, you still, and I just wanted to because I felt bad about leaving that one out. I actually think that that can be, can be very useful here. So nuclear, I will say, what I'll say there is that I think you would have to have either basically a, you know, a hundred percent government supported project.

And or change in the electricity grid that we have in Alberta, right? So this competitive generation market is not the one where it's gonna be. I'll even say possible to build nuclear, you could either, you know, reregulate or essentially if government comes in though and builds nuclear, the challenge there is probably partially building the nuclear, but actually partially dealing with trying to put, uh, government funded nuclear into a competitive market.

Right? So it's more of almost an economic challenge than a necessarily physical challenge. 

Ed Whittingham: Yeah, you know, I had a conversation, I'll give him a shout out. The, uh, the wonderful student who, uh, is writing up our show notes, Michael Edmonds, and he's been doing his thesis on nuclear financing. And what does it come down to?

It comes down to what we've known for a hell of a long time, that there's a high capital cost, and that's a barrier. And you're right that the market right now doesn't incentivize getting over that high capital cost. I think it's entirely possible you look at it though, realistically in Canada. I think it's more possible in Ontario where we already have nuclear assets and possibly Saskatchewan, where you have a big mining company that mines uranium and then people are kind of more socialized to it.

And I wouldn't discount the social license aspect in Alberta with a lot of Ukrainians living in Edmonton who have long memories and, and remember Chernobyl. And I'm not saying there is a legitimate safety risk. I personally don't think there is a safety risk. Every kind of energy is a safety risk, but I think that would create social license challenges in Alberta.

David Keith: The answer is you're guessing that people don't like it, but I want to just emphasize that that's really it. And you say that the problem is financing. 'cause the capital cost is high. The capital cost is not high. It's high. In some places that have made social choices that make it high, it's not in. 

Ed Whittingham: And I wouldn't say people don't like it because I was privy to polling that, uh, an environmental group, uh, a think tank called Clean Prosperity pulled up.

I forget the polling firm they used, but it's something like a slight majority half of Canadians support nuclear power. You've got 20% of Canadians who are dead set against it. 30% are undecided right now. And, and with those 30% go, I think the ambitions of any kind of policymaker, the provincial or federal level, but in terms of.

Bright spots, like if you care about nuclear and you think it should be part of the Canadian energy mix, you've seen a lot of bright spots recently, including its explicit reference in this MOU consultation happening. There's a reference to it in the new clean BC draft. So there are these indicators saying, Hey, we might need to rethink our, our hesitance around it.

David Keith: Yeah, I mean, you can argue lots of ways, but I just wanna sort of point out that the thing I, I think it's actually quite unlikely to happen, so I, I agree with you folks, but just to sort of try and put a pin on this, if. The, the world that Sara painted is a pretty expensive world because batteries do that are expensive.

I mean, in the very long run, maybe not. I think batteries will keep getting cheaper, but in the near term, it's a pretty expensive world. So in the end, government's forcing that. Government's imposing a lot of costs. Could some future governments say, Hey. It's just a lot cheaper understanding. We've gotta resettle our electric market, but it's fundamentally cheaper.

There'll be more money in the hands of Albertans. Um, if we just build a few and if we build it without the crazy regulations that people have, you know, a right-wing government say, we'll do this in some simple way. Make some weird deal with a, a Korean or Chinese company, and just do it in a way that, um, minimizes intervention and gets it done cheaply.

Ed Whittingham: Sure. And if you're doing installations in China, two to 3000 bucks, USD per kilowatt, what kind of installation, what kind of price could you achieve here in Canada with, uh, Wessing Hills? Was it the, a 1000 or some similar reactor? So, uh, I, I personally think that nuclear, I, I'm, I'm not a betting man. Uh, I would say I'm, I'm gonna hedge, I think it faces an uphill climb, but we might actually be seeing the start of a bit of a renaissance here in Canada.

Sara Hastings-Simon: We'll have to come back in 2050 and, uh, check in on that one. Yeah. 

Ed Whittingham: And actually to you, Sara, like, and, and a big one of the question marks for nuclear is if you actually have an $130 per ton effective carbon price, can you get it over that capital cost hurdle? 

David Keith: I, I, I'll throw it a different way. I, I think, I think that the only way it happens is this part of.

Larger, massive rethink and, and kind of, um, not a revolution is too strong in the way Western world builds stuff and gets us done. 'cause the fact is, is the symptom, I mean, we're losing all sorts of manufacturing China. There are all sorts of things that are very expensive and slow to do here at us is in some ways even worse, that are quicker to do elsewhere.

And I think to me, I don't see new caters kind of happening on its own. But I think he was gotta be part of something that really radically reshapes the way we permit and build things to make it cheaper. 

Ed Whittingham: And I will say the guy at the top, Mark Carney, it seems like a defining characteristic of his prime ministership so far is he gets that he wants Canada to build things.

And he realizes that, that there are a bunch of barriers, including some of the policies and regulations that some of us activists have fought for that are getting in the way. And what I've said before is energy gridlock. It's good for no one. Whether, you know, it's great energy gridlock, you know, you use regulatory uh, processes, I'm gonna block that.

Oil sands mine as a result. But those exact same processes can you use to block the wind farms that you enviro types want. And it's not good for everyone. And there definitely has to be some reor reordering there. Okay, well this is the fun question. Uh, Kyle Merrit. This is like, like the softball question.

Uh, it seems like the economy versus the environment narrative is as deeply entrenched as ever as it ever has been in Canada, on the edges. There are stories that seem to move beyond the zero sum concept that anything extractive must be good for the wealth of the country. But we hear over and over again the need to double down on fossil fuels so our economy won't collapse.

Ring the full thing. So you have the proper preamble. My question is, why is the show called Energy versus Climate? Does this reinforce the, and the parentheses false narrative that we can have a country that is both wealthy and clean. I'm guessing there are likely some layers to your choice in the name and would love to hear about it.

It's fitting that we're sitting in your place, David, 'cause it was your old place. I remember we got together and we came up with a name. I'll give you full credit for being the first person to throw out that name. So first crack to you. Why the verses, and as we often hear, why not the energy and climate?

David Keith: I think because we wanted to emphasize that there really are trade-offs. So I do think we can have a country that's prosperous and clean absolutely. But you can't get everything at once. You can't get suddenly very prosperous and clean all at once easily. And there really are trade offs and I think we all in different ways see that and agree with it.

And we wanted to kind of. Had the main poke holes in this kind of easy assumption that is some triple bottom line can make this all go away. I think the answer is getting these things really does require some choices and those choices involve tensions. And that doesn't mean we can't get, well, I'm repeating myself.

We absolutely can have a clean and prosperous economy, but you can't do all of that quickly without losing something. It, it's you, you have to think. 

Sara Hastings-Simon: I think, I think it's interesting how people have reacted to the name actually, right? Because it, I, I often when people are saying why energy versus climate, it almost to me sounds like they're, say they're, they're thinking of the name as like economy versus climate or, you know, prosperous country versus climate, which as you said is, is not it.

But I think to me it was this idea that like. As you said, there tend to be a lot of talk of like, oh, we can have like this totally decarbonized, you know, Canada and also lots of, you know, energy production in the form of oil. And like that is just to me, nonsensical, right, both in terms of being able to do that, but also like, you know, if we're fully decarbonized who's using this oil elsewhere and you know, are they not also decarbonized too?

So I think it was, as you said exactly to kind of get at that tension and the idea that, I think to me, that like climate. Both because of the need to respond to climate, but also because of the changing climate is going to shape our energy systems. Right? And so it's sort of like those two things are come together.

Climate is, you know, whether we want to believe it or not is real and is changing. And that meeting our energy systems is resulting in pretty dramatic changes to our energy systems. And so I think that to me is what we're talking about. Not like, oh, we're choosing between having energy or climate, but rather that when those two forces meet you, you know.

Lots of interesting things happen that we talk about, and 

David Keith: I'm glad you said it's it we, we didn't name it and I wouldn't wanna name it. Economy versus climate. Yeah, exactly. In the most basic sense. I mean, roughly 80% of the world's energy comes from fossil fuels if fossil fuels are the cause of climate.

So it's some basic thing. It's just descriptive. It is kinda energy. It's existing energy versus climate. 

Ed Whittingham: I, I'm wondering that 80% number. So I've heard that, uh, figure around for about a decade, and I wonder if that is now finally really starting to move. It 

David Keith: is just beginning to inch down, 

Ed Whittingham: just beginning.

Sara Hastings-Simon: And it is, I have to, like, this is one of my pet peeves. It is, uh, primary energy, so it. Which is a totally fair way to talk about it, but I just have to get this off my chest that when you think about having to replace that energy, if you're talking about electrification, you don't actually have to replace the whole, I'm telling you guys things, you know, but you don't have to replace the whole 80% because a significant portion of the fossil energy that's used, uh, goes into waste heat that we don't 

Ed Whittingham: should, and to get on my hobby horse, I think to your.

Uh, point Sara, I, I just think that especially Canadian politicians are guilty of this. We're not having honest conversations about the trade-offs, and for me, it's all about the trade-offs and acknowledgement of the trade-offs. You can't have your cake and eat it too. You can build out this big, robust.

Exporting oil and gas sector and achieve these ridiculously difficult emissions reduction targets. And you know what? Canadians are smart. And when you tell them you can do the two things well, we can walk and chew gum at the same time. Well, you can't and you're being dishonest. And it's time to be honest about that.

And one thing I'll say about EBC or energy versus climate, in the early days I used to, you know. People without naming names who I would think would be fine with the name and say, you know, love the show, hate the name. I hear that a lot less, and maybe it's because we're being successful in that we're actually talking about the trade-offs and people are accepting the verses and not demanding an and or it's the KFC ification of DBC.

People just think of EVC now and not energy versus climate, and what I'm suggesting is a full rebrand. We get rid of energy versus climate. Everything's EVC, and we have retail outlets and we conquer the world. Do you? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Hmm. 

Sara Hastings-Simon: Is there a fried chicken involved somewhere? 

Ed Whittingham: Definitely fried chicken involved.

There's honest conversation about the tough trade-offs between energy and climate and fried chicken that, could it be echinacea versus cod? It can be. Thanks for listening to Energy versus Climate. The show is created by David, Keith, Sara Hastings-Simon, and me, Ed Whittingham. And produced by Amit Tandon.

Our title in show Music is The Windup by Brian Lips. This season of Energy Versus Climate is produced with support from the North Family Foundation, the Consecon Foundation, the Trottier Family Foundation, and you are generous. Listeners, sign up for updates and exclusive webinar access at energyvsclimate.com and review and rate us on your favorite podcast platform.

This helps new listeners. To find the show. If you enjoyed this episode, check out the Ask Us Anything Show from 2024 by going to season six, episode six. We'll be back in January with both a live webinar and a live in-person. Show webinars on January 14th. When we'll talk all things aviation with special guests, Sebastian Easton of Imperial College in the UK.

Then on January 27th, we're live and in person at the Energy Transition Center in Calgary, Alberta to talk about, you guessed it, Alberta's energy transition. Thanks to Avatar Innovations who are graciously hosting us once again and keep an eye out for emails about both shows. Until then, take care and we'll see you in the new year.