BONUS | EvC vs The Internet: David, Sara, and Ed respond to the comment section

They say there's no growth without feedback. This season, you've given us plenty of it.

In this episode, David, Sara, and Ed do something most podcasters shouldn't do: they read the comments. Out loud and on purpose.

Some feedback was positive. Some was additive. Some fell into the category we're calling "strongly suggestive." 

If you've ever left a comment on an EvC clip wondering whether David, Sara and Ed actually saw it: they did. This is what they had to say back.

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Ed Whittingham: But David, you know it because a bunch of commenters are now gonna say, I'm cowardly for not taking your bet. I'll take your bet at five to one odds. Okay. 

[00:00:09] Sara Hastings-Simon: I'll just come along and drink whoever's Scotch wins. 

[00:00:13] 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 debate today's climate and energy challenges.

They say there's no growth without feedback. In this past season, you've given us plenty of it across a variety of social media and podcast platforms, and even through good old email. So we decided to lean into the growth opportunity and read and respond to some of what you've sent our way. Some of your comments are positive, some additive, and let's just say some are strongly suggestive.

So without further ado, here's the show. 

[00:00:50] David Keith: Hey, everyone, today, we're here with a bit of a different 

[00:00:53] Ed Whittingham: episode instead of us telling you what we think, we're starting with what you think, and that's straight from the common sections of our various social channels. Some of your comments are sharp, some are wrong, some are a little insulting, but that's fine.

And, uh, some are a combination of all of them. So we're just gonna get straight into it. Uh, I think of this one as our own mean tweets show. So this first segment, I call this first segment, I hate EVs. Uh, here's one that's short 

[00:01:30] Sara Hastings-Simon: and I didn't know that. 

[00:01:32] Ed Whittingham: Oh, yes. Uh, well, it's funny. I, I, I guess I'm a self hating EV owner.

Then here's one from Diax and it reads, EV is good only for warm weather. Not in cold climate. Uh, Sara, you picked this one. Uh, what do you think? You drive, you drive in Calgary, winter's and ev so, uh, what's, what's your, what, what is your thinking? 

[00:01:55] Sara Hastings-Simon: Well, I mean, I have sympathy because I prefer warm weather to cold climates.

But what I'll say about this is there is a differentiation and an important one, I think between doesn't work and works with lower range. So I think one of the common misconceptions that I hear from people who are even not ev haters necessarily, um, is that they're concerned about, you know, is my ev gonna work when it's minus 30?

And the answer to that is a resounding yes. You know, I, I think it's the, the mechanics of a electric motor versus the complexity and mechanics of a internal combustion engine, um, are more reliable at cold temperatures. Um, what is true however, is that the range is lower for the batteries that we have today.

And again, there, there's nuance. You know, if you're driving your ev around town, you're not really gonna notice much of a difference. You'll have to, you know, charge a little bit more frequently. Similarly, uh, if you have enough infrastructure to go longer distances, again, you're going to have to be doing more charging if you're driving in the winter.

Uh, I think it is fair and we, we do have to admit that for some of the real long distance driving in very cold places like Alberta, um, we are a bit at the limit, right? So if you wanna go, you know, skiing frequently in your ev to far destinations in Alberta may or may not be the best choice, depending on, you know, how much you wanna deal with charge management.

Um, but I think it's important for us to remember, you know, the majority of people in the world do not live in places that get this cold. So I think we'll, you know, continue to see improvements, um, and the experiences that come from Alberta, you know, while manageable on a day-to-day basis. C certainly people can come up with use cases where an EV isn't gonna be the best option today.

[00:03:47] David Keith: I'll just jump in to say I concede there certainly is a challenge. So my wife frequently is striving from our home in Canmore to her folks in, uh, Okotoks and, uh, in the new gm, uh, EV that we have in the summer. Going back and forth on one charge is no problem, but in the winter it doesn't quite work. So totally agreed.

Things work, but range is reduced. One thing to say is that technological change really is happening. So, um, sodium is being introduced instead of, uh, replacing lithium in similar chemistry batteries. And these things have gone from something that was really purely academic to, um, being deployed in the, uh, north America already for energy storage and being, uh, now entering production chains for EVs and expecting they will be in EVs, uh, sold in North America within a year or two.

And sodium batteries basically suffered no degradation at all in the cold. So, uh, I think change is happening. And that's even forgetting the thing that's one step further away, which is solid state batteries, which are supposed to charge much faster and always also would not be much affected by cold as far as I know.

So this is not a permanent fact of EVs, it's the fact of the current lithium ion, uh, chemistry. Mm-hmm. 

[00:05:00] Ed Whittingham: And as an EV owner. So yes, I too suffer from the minus 30% range or something in that order during the coldest days. Now Norway has, uh, the worst winters of any country with serious EV adoption, but also the highest EV adoption on earth.

So if cold kills EVs, no one told the Norwegians. And lastly, I think you need to do an apples to apples comparison because gas, like internal combustion engine vehicles, they lose winter efficiency as well. It's just invisible because they don't display your range the same way that, uh, EVs do. So it's, uh, it's a lot less noticeable.

But listen, I think we've covered that one well, we're still in the I hate EV segment. Let's go to Aaron Rude. And I love the last, uh, I, I have no idea if it's his actual last name. He says, please explain where all the power is going to come from to support these vehicles, meaning EVs, the infrastructure's 20 years behind these goals.

[00:05:57] Sara Hastings-Simon: I did a bit of math that I can talk through to start. Um, so if we look for ex, 'cause I think that's helpful to understand and, and what it really comes down to is that the amount of electricity that we're talking about on a general scale is not. All that significant, uh, compared with what we generate today.

Um, so in Alberta, for example, if you were to electrify all registered motor vehicles, um, that's almost 4 million vehicles today. A little bit, a little bit under, you'd be talking about somewhere around 11 terawatt hours for a year. So, you know, is that big? Is that not big? That's about 13% increase of our total electricity use in Alberta today.

Uh, and it's important to remember that we're not talking about doing this tomorrow. You know, as you start to change over the fleet, you will certainly have time to build out more electricity. The real, um, I think more challenging part that again, there's solutions for is that when exactly that charging comes matters.

Um, but again, there, there's a lot of opportunities to do so-called, uh, demand flexibility. Basically the idea that you don't necessarily care all that much when your EV is charged as long as it is charged. And again, this is not a sort of theoretical, you know, magical thinking, but you look at places like the uk, uh, and others that have implement, started to implement this at scale.

And what they're finding is that they can get quite a lot of flexibility to be able to, um, smooth out peaks in demand and even respond to, uh, different shapes and supply, uh, by incentivizing people with lower cost ev charging. 

[00:07:36] David Keith: That's a great answer for Canada also, remember, Canada's an outlier with, uh, renewables being, at least solar, being comparatively harder in Canada and, uh, and colder temperatures.

Lots of the world where, where most of demand is are places where it's much easier to have solar capacity with, uh, diurnal batteries. And so there's a much more obvious answer about how we expand the grid to, to power EVs. 

[00:07:59] Ed Whittingham: Sure. And infrastructure planning is always behind till the year it isn't. Think of cell towers in 2008 and it, and it's local.

You can't make a blanket statement about that, but you know, regulators and utilities do and can under build. So I think the planning risk failure is real, even if it's a bit of a doomers statement. Okay, next one. John Wayne's teeth says, my entire community is powered by diesel 3.25 million litres per year, roughly.

It has a free government funded charging station installed downtown. While I'd never want to miss a chance to dig on Alberta, I also think we need to be realistic about where our infrastructure is across the country before getting smug about EVs. Well, I, I, I will start. I will start, but just saying. The, the free charger that perhaps no one asked for.

And where diesel generators are running, that's kinda like performance art. You know, this is sometimes where I think climate policy makes the mistake of delivering a symbolic win instead of a substantial, substantive one. And the real issue is not how people are getting around. The real issue is that's a community running on diesel, which is expensive and polluting, and they should be focused on other ways to get off diesel.

[00:09:13] Sara Hastings-Simon: Yeah, I think the only thing I'll add to that is, again, we should be realistic in our discussions about kind of the, let's call it the last 5% of decarbonization, which is going to be undoubtedly, you know, by far the hardest part. And so I would include in that, um, you know, addressing EVs in non-G grid connected communities, which is not to say that, you know, things can't be done.

And I think there, there's a lot to do, you know, uh, around getting communities off diesel for a lot of other great reasons. But, you know, it is fair that the, that last bit and, and some of these edge cases are going to be the most difficult. 

[00:09:53] Ed Whittingham: Great. Let's go to the next one. Croy. Joe says oil is going nowhere.

EVs are going nowhere. There isn't going to be a wholesale switch to EVs anytime soon. They will simply occupy part of the market no different from diesel vehicles. The idea that one will replace the other in short time is naive, you know, and David croaky Joe makes what is actually kind of a reasonable structural argument about EVs will be part of the market, not the whole market.

What are your thoughts? 

[00:10:25] David Keith: Well, I think it all hangs on what a short time is. So if, if we're talking years, then of course he's right. But nobody sensible is, I think that if we're talking the next couple decades, I'm pretty confident he's wrong. That is, I think it's very likely that EVs will eat into a bunch of the oil market that's used for light duty transportation.

Indeed, I would expect that over the next decades we're gonna quickly see a world where more than half of vehicle sales for light duty vehicles are EVs and then, you know, run that out a decade. That means the fleet has shifted and that takes a whole bunch of that oil demand away. And I don't think it magically gets replaced.

So I really do think that EVs will eat into oil demand. Of course not everywhere. There will still be oil demand for, uh, light duty vehicles in specific places and oil demand for aircraft and so on, you know, out to the foreseeable future. But I do think he's wrong, unless you, by short term you mean years.

[00:11:18] Ed Whittingham: Great. Let's go to the next one. Um, and this is about Canada Imports, batteries, EVs, mark, make more sense in China. Jeff Rust, 6, 7, 8, 7 says, A country with oil versus a country without oil. China imports all of its oil. Canada imports all of its batteries. Electric cars make sense in China, but not so much in Canada unless used strictly for in city commuting.

[00:11:41] Sara Hastings-Simon: So I think that, again, a lot of these comments, what's interesting to me is they have a sort of kernel of truth to them, but then the conclusion that's drawn from it, I think is incorrect. So, you know, yes, China as a oil importer has even more kind of, uh, economic and energy security reasons to want to move to EVs.

However, I don't think that Canada has an anti case just because we're an oil exporter. And I think there's two, two reasons for that. One is, you know, as we've seen right now for anybody that's filling up at the pump, oil is very much a global market, and Canada is very much exposed to global prices. So, you know, barring some kind of national energy programme that sets costs for oil across the country, which, uh, you know, it's interesting to hear unusual suspects asking for that now.

But barring that Canada, Canada status as an oil exporter does not mean that, you know, we, we don't stand to gain in terms of, uh, protecting consumers from inflation by moving to electrification. And then the second thing I'll say is that around batteries, uh, you know, it's not a one for one replacement with batteries and the oil in cars.

You know, I do think certainly as we see larger and larger shares of our, uh, of our, of our energy system become electrified, we do need to think about energy security and, uh, you know, diversity in supply chains for things like batteries. You know, there's a slightly different calculation in terms of. If you have an internal combustion engine vehicle, you know, you need, uh, fuel the next day when it runs outta fuel.

If you have a battery electric via vehicle, um, once you have the battery, you have the battery, and it's all about the local electricity that you put into it. It's a longer term planning. And then, you know, frankly, it's, it's using the same kind of tools that we use for oil, right? I mean, we're, we're living through that now.

Countries have strategic oil reserves that help, uh, provide energy security in, uh, in cases where there's kind of global, um, crises that that lead to problems there. So I think those same kinds of mechanisms can be deployed in countries like Canada and I think will be as, as we move further into the energy transition.

[00:14:07] Ed Whittingham: Yeah, it's a bit ironic. Um, I suspect this person is a Western Canadian 'cause you've paid attention. There have been lots of federal Ontario announcements about building an ev uh, supply chain, especially in Ontario. So it's, uh, a little less, um, you know, exporting oil versus not. And it's more will that supply chain actually ever pick up and produce economic output comparable to Canada exporting oil?

And who knows, I doubt it, but maybe it will. Okay, so our next segment we call nuclear power is Awesome. A bunch of people arguing for the merits of nuclear power, a commenter with a username that I, it's just a bunch of user digits, so I'll just go with that. Makes a detailed case for nuclear over wind in terms of capacity factor reliability, dirt, bird deaths.

Uh, infrastructure footprint. Uh, David, you've thought a lot about this without reading the whole comment. What are your thoughts? 

[00:15:04] David Keith: Pretty much each of the specific factors that the user says, strike me as correct. There are all sorts of ways in which nuclear power is clearly better when it's built and working, but what the user didn't say is that, um, at least in the western world, we basically don't know how to build nuclear power.

That's a slight overstatement, but not a big overstatement. And that reality is unavoidable. There might be ways to fix it, but if you look at all of the recent builds in the, in the western world, they're all going way over time in budget in some cases outrageously so. So what I think we know is that we used to be able to build nuclear power.

The US built up a big fleet, for example, and at the costs at the time were quite reasonable. And, uh, China is now able to build nuclear reactors, uh, roughly on time and on budget and things working well. And it's obviously possible for us to do it because we did. But, um, right now I think it's fair to say we don't know how to, how to, and so, uh, um, the counterpoint to the user's statement is that, uh, there needs to be real changes in this regulatory structure and the business structure, uh, to enable these bills to happen in a reasonable way in the western world or, um, the user's comments are irrelevant even if they're correct.

[00:16:16] Ed Whittingham: Yep. And the world is watching it. As we talked about with Jason Don if a few weeks ago, we do have new build, new nuclear build underway in Canada. It's the Darlington, uh, SMR project using the BWRX 300 reactor. They've set a blindingly fast production schedule in under five years, and the world is watching.

If they're able to deli deliver that on time, on budget, then the order book will fill up. If they can't, then the order book will not fill up. 

[00:16:47] David Keith: Ed. Um, I will bet you a bottle of the nicest scotch that we can buy in Canmore at. Um, no, I need to have away at like five to one odd, it's basically, um, yeah, fi five, five bottles to one.

Would you take the bet that they'll do it on time? 

[00:17:04] Ed Whittingham: Uh, no, because I think it's too fast. It's under four years. But would they do it say with 20% time overrun? So I would say, I think that's 

[00:17:16] David Keith: a big question 

[00:17:16] Ed Whittingham: under six years. I'd take that bet. 

[00:17:18] David Keith: I sure hope they can do it better, but I think at present as things stand looking at the actual reactors under construction in the Western world, you just, you just have to say it doesn't look good.

[00:17:28] Ed Whittingham: Yeah. But David, you know what? Because a bunch of commenters are now gonna say, I'm cowardly for not taking your bet. I'll take your bet at five to one odds. 

[00:17:36] David Keith: Okay. 

[00:17:38] Sara Hastings-Simon: I'll just come along and drink whoever's scotch wins. 

[00:17:43] Ed Whittingham: Well, perfect, perfect. Well, a bit of a segue. The next one we call the woman is delusional about cost because Mr.

Imaginative three says this woman is delusional about the cost, the most efficient energy is nuclear, end of story. And we think he was referring to you, Sara. So, uh, are you delusional about cost? 

[00:18:05] Sara Hastings-Simon: I'm certainly delusional about some things like thinking, you know, watching the World Cup that like I could still go out and play soccer.

So, uh, I'm not gonna claim I have no delusions. Um, as far as costs though, I, I think I'm pretty well supported by the data. So, you know, we can talk about what costs you wanna look at. Certainly if you look at just pure LCOE for solar, um, the costs are becoming minuscule compared with that of nuclear. If you wanna make it a little bit harder and add in, um, batteries so that you, uh, turn that solar into something that's a bit more available, uh, you know, kind of 24 7 in most climates around the world, a recent report from Ember pigs, the cost of doing that, you know, somewhere in the range of a hundred to $130 a megawatt hour compared with, you know, if you could build it, uh, nuclear around 175.

So, you know, the reality is, um, no electricity system is going to run on a single source of, of power, but it is no longer the case that nuclear has even this theoretical, you know, massive cost advantage over something like 95% available solar plus storage. 

[00:19:23] David Keith: Yeah. 

[00:19:24] Ed Whittingham: Yeah. I think the commentary is delusional because it's no secret.

Nuclear is a lot of things, but cheap isn't one of them. And uh, by most independent cost analyses, it's the most expensive electricity out there, but you get other benefits for that expense. Okay, continue. 

[00:19:39] David Keith: I wanna push back a little bit. I think it's not, I mean, no, doing solar with enough batteries to really be seasonal, 7 24 dispatchable in Alberta, I think would be certainly more expensive than nuclear in China.

The, that's the point, is it, we don't know how to build that nuclear here. 

[00:19:56] Sara Hastings-Simon: I think that's fair. I think, again, we have to remember the, the d as you are differentiate between solar and Alberta and, and solar elsewhere. Um, and, and then the real cost. 

[00:20:08] Ed Whittingham: This, uh, this next comment builds on what you're just talking about.

David Candy 1 0 0 2 2 says, South Korea builds nuclear reactors within budget and on time. So we could take a, have a separate bet on some South Korean reactor build. And the reason why nuclear reactors are so expensive is because we have a deep state that makes the process so expensive. I, I, I'll, I'll take a crack at this one.

I mean, you don't need a deep state to explain it. It's just a spreadsheet. Like Korea builds reactors eight to 12 times in a row in Canada. Going forward, we're running the risk of building a different reactor. Korea gets all the advantages of standardisation in the same way that China now is forcing standardisation on its new nuclear and you're seeing the costs as a result.

I think we're getting now, you know, costs coming in, in South Korea there are like 2200 a kilowatt and as we know started in the US it starts from 6,000 bucks a kilowatt and goes up from there. So I think they've really captured standardisation and that's something that Canada has to pay attention to.

Why we're moving away from CANDU. Well, that remains to be seen. 

[00:21:17] David Keith: Estimates in China put cost of the current bills at, you know, something of orders $70 a megawatt hour, and, and in sunny places solar bl plus battery backup can actually be cheaper than that. But, um, in, in other places, solar plus battery backup would be a lot more expensive.

And I think the question is, can other places replicate those costs? 

[00:21:39] Sara Hastings-Simon: I, I do wanna pick up on the deep state piece 'cause I actually think the, I would characterise the issue more as a lack of state capacity, uh, on, on Canada's part and, and others in the west. Uh, and you know, as any fan of Korean skincare products know they are innovating faster and their regulators are working better to bring innovation to the market than I think we see happening in in North America.

Uh, so, you know, what's true for skincare I think is true for energy in this case as well too. 

[00:22:10] Ed Whittingham: Yeah, I mean it really is. The, the difference is South Korea isn't letting its welders retire in between builds. But Canada right now, that mentioned the Darlington SMR project, that's 27 years after we built the last nuclear unit in Canada.

So a lot of the skilled trades have simply retired in that time. Okay, next segment we call nuclear power sucks. So now we're gonna hear from the anti-nuclear folks, and the first one is X Spanish manx equivocating battery waste to nuclear waste, and then framing it as worse than nuclear waste. Seems disingenuous.

I think this was directed at you, David. 

[00:22:48] David Keith: I don't think it's disingenuous, I think it's accurate and practical environmental analysis. So if you actually look at the risk estimates or, or observe risks so far from the temporary nuclear waste storage we have, or risk estimates from the nuclear waste storage, we're talking about the risk estimates that we're debating in some of these storage are the idea that somebody a hundred thousand years from now who drinks water from a well that's most contaminated has, um, cancer rates that are barely at background.

And, um, you don't have to travel far to see places where battery waste is much more severe. The existing, um, challenges of lead acid batteries contaminating people and damaging especially children's brains, neurological neurologically are already very real. So I think the answer is just look at the environmental evidence, actual damage and expect the damage from the metals involved in battery production are significantly higher than what we expect from nuclear waste.

[00:23:49] Ed Whittingham: Irwin Dreesen added a comment, this was during the webinar with Jason Donne and he said, uh, about waste. Uh, if managing the waste is such a non problem, how come most of the countries that have nuclear reactors are still looking for solutions after 60 years? 

[00:24:06] David Keith: So no country is now operating a permanent regulated nuclear waste repository.

I think that's because for a lot of reasons, including worries that are legitimate about nuclear war, worries about the nuclear industry lying, which it has worries about it not being economically efficient, which it is, are legitimate since it hasn't been in lots of places. Uh, interveners who are sceptical for good reasons about nuclear power have chosen to intervene in the, uh, waste process in ways that have made it, um, not complete.

And government has been weak and failed to complete it. And most of all, the US has some particularly terrible things, both politically and technically about their waste storage decision. And that because the US is important in the press, it, it tends to kind of overwhelm other ones. So I think there are lots of reasons why nuclear waste storage has been fraught, but I don't think they're about the fundamental technical difficulty or cost.

[00:25:04] Ed Whittingham: Yeah, and I think Irwin's, after 60 years still looking for solutions Point actually needs an update because at the end of this month, that's not gonna be true anymore. Finland's on Callow, uh, site could be receiving a spent fuel by the end of the year. I think Sweden's not too far behind. And here in Canada, Canada's further along than you know, saying, still looking for a site.

We've got the Waba, goon Lake, Ojibwe Nation, and the town of, uh, Igna ness. I believe that they partnered. And so we're finally seeing deep geological storage projects getting done. Let's go to the next one. Brian Hope says, the fact is nuclear was sold as energy to cheap to metre by engineers and proponents who just wanted to syphon off taxpayer money.

The estimates for projects were wildly understated. Final costs were five times as high as the estimates, and that doesn't include ongoing costs and the costs of storing waste. And I, I will say, too cheap to metre that. That was a real quote. That's real history. Um, and I think it came outta the us uh, atomic, uh, energy commission.

And I do remember growing up as a kid in Ontario, there was some talk about that, that nuclear assets, nuclear units in Ontario would make electricity too cheap to metre. And of course that never, that never came to bear. 

[00:26:29] Sara Hastings-Simon: We do, of course, see it now. I just, I just saw the latest, uh, an ad for, I think it was dishwashers and washing machines that are sold in Europe, uh, from, this is not an ad, but I think it was like Siemens and Bosch, where they've partnered with the utility, uh, and you get free dish washing and free laundry, uh, if you agree to link it to your, you know, utility and have it run at a certain time of day.

So it is interesting to see that, you know, in, in some way we are starting to end up with a version of too cheap to metre or at least willing to give away for free electricity all these years later. 

[00:27:05] Ed Whittingham: Yeah, and I do think we need to acknowledge that overselling has done real damage to nuclear's credibility and that damage is still playing out today.

We talked about new builds happening in places like China and South Korea coming on time on budget, and I, again, we'll see what happens here, but it definitely is a, is a real issue and I can understand why there's so much distrust out there. And we talked about the unlearning curve with Jason when each successive project becomes more expensive to the than the last one that's going the opposite direction.

The rate payer bears the cost. People get upset and they get sceptical. Okay, let's go on to segment four. And this solar power is a joke. So Bill Hu says, and this is I guess where our, our solar is going to what our solar wins everything or wins all show and directed at Sara. You gotta be kidding. Solar power is minuscule as a minuscule power source and completely uneconomic.

[00:28:07] Sara Hastings-Simon: Well, we touched the uneconomic, so I'll focus on the first port and I'll agree. Solar is a, is very tiny power source. It's actually a quantum, you know, level process where you're, uh, kicking out electrons inside silicon, uh, semiconductor. But I don't think that, that is what Bill was talking about here, rather about the scale of deployment.

So I, I looked up a few facts for this one as well too. Um, two key ones I think that are interesting, uh, solar and wind together. So you can say, maybe I'm cheating a bit here, but solar and wind together, uh, hit a milestone in April of this year where they generated more power globally than natural gas for the first time in history.

So, you know, that that's a, a scale question and I think a lot of this really comes down to just how quickly this has grown and how easy it is if you're not watching the stats, you know, daily to be shocked by this stuff. So I've got one more stat for you, which is, uh, in 2011, which happens to be the year my kids were born, there was 64 terawatt hours of solar globally.

Now play that forward. You know, you would've looked at my, uh, five pound and changed children in 2011 and said they're minuscule. They can't lift anything. They've, you know, they've grown maybe about three times in height and five-ish times in weight. They are much stronger than I am now. Over that same period, solar, uh, grew 43 times, uh, in, in generation.

So it's up around, uh, 2,700 terawatt hours in 2025. So much like Bill would be shocked, uh, if he met my kids for the second time today. Uh, I think he, you know, he is really just maybe not totally up to date on the, the scale of solar generation today. 

[00:30:01] David Keith: Just to add on a connection to the last conversation and agree violently with Sara.

Um, you can argue, you can't argue with numbers. It's uh, uh, solar is now almost equal with nuclear net generation, and it'll only be a couple years at current trajectories before it surpasses nuclear for a global net. 

[00:30:19] Ed Whittingham: Yeah. And minuscule is a strange word for a source of power that just helped two European countries in, uh, Spain and Portugal get to 40% of the grid, so no longer minuscule.

Okay, this next, that was a, a one common segment. The next segment is the opposite. Solar power is awesome. I'm gonna go to Iko taco. He says, okay, but solar pan, solar also doesn't need to take up land. It takes up space for sure, but there's ways to mitigate that. For example, solar films and panels on existing buildings and fences over canals and fisheries, power plants and space beaming a laser back to earth.

And I think, David, this is in a response to you and a couple times you've, you've said, Hey, yeah, the, we have to, uh, we have to acknowledge that solar power is land intensive. 

[00:31:09] David Keith: Well, you can't have everything. So the comments about buildings coated with solar, the answer is it just doesn't scale at a reasonable cost.

So yes, it's true, and, and solar on big industrial warehouses is great, but it's just not at the scale. You need to really power a big chunk of industrial civilization. If solar was confined just to being on buildings, it would be confined to being a minor energy source. If we're gonna do solar at scale, it needs to be taking up land, kind of of order a percent of the whole Earth's surface.

If we're gonna power a big chunk of industrial civilization on it, uh, that's a trade off. I think it's worth making, but it's not nothing, and it really will have environmental impacts. Of course, it's true that in principle, solar could be its space and in space and beam down. People have talked about this for decades.

There's nothing fundamentally hard about it, but it's not close to being in the market now. So, but looking over this entry, it's certainly a possibility. 

[00:32:04] Sara Hastings-Simon: Yeah, I mean, stuff takes space. I think what matters is, you know, is it, is it a amount of space that we potentially have to use? And I think, you know, we, we use a lot of space now to grow corn to generate, uh, energy, which is wildly inefficient compared with using that same space for land.

I do think that there are some, you know, really interesting examples. There's a, a not insignificant new project in California where they are covering indeed, uh, some of the canals that move water around the state with solar panels. Um, and it's a real win-win 'cause you are, um, also protecting that water from evaporation.

So I think this is a matter of, you know, yes, we should look for opportunities to integrate solar in ways that, um, you know, repurpose or use land and we should not, uh, you know, stop using other land for solar as well too, 

[00:32:58] David Keith: to give people a sense of the actual numbers. Uh, a square metre of average land, not very much.

Where, where it is will generate something like 10 watts on average of, of solar power and uh, would generate an average, something like one watt of wind power or hydropower. Again, it depends of course on the dam and so on. And, and would generate much under a watt of power from biofuels and, uh, would generate, uh, more like a hundred watts of nuclear power, even counting all the mine, uranium mining and all the infrastructure.

So those, that range gives you a sense of what the land use is for different, um, energy use, energy sources. 

[00:33:36] Ed Whittingham: Yeah, I think maybe the solar industry has to sort of more frequently acknowledge the land footprint as an issue, but our provincial government here in Alberta has certainly used the land footprint as a cudgel to beat renewable electricity developers senseless.

[00:33:51] David Keith: But I think I kind of rattled those numbers off in a way that might not have been very digestible. I think the point is solar is better than all the other major energy sources except nuclear. It's substantially better than wind for land footprint and much better than biofuels or hydro 

[00:34:05] Ed Whittingham: just on space solar.

I gather that, um, in the DARPA test that they're able to beam a laser. Across eight and a half kilometres and, uh, producing 800 watts, which is like enough to power a hairdryer. So maybe it'll come sooner than we think. It's a pretty neat experiment. 

[00:34:25] Sara Hastings-Simon: Go watch, uh, real genius if you wanna see that's gone wrong.

I know that that's not what the space oil people are doing now. I just, uh, I can't, uh, help but think of that, of that movie. Um, but, but I actually think the Space Solar, you know, I've done a little bit more looking into it recently and it does seem like a real potential. I think one of the biggest barriers or question marks is, you know, can you really get bigger, heavier payloads launched at, uh, at competitive costs?

And there I'm not a space scientist, so I leave that to others. 

[00:34:55] David Keith: Yeah, I mean, it's important to say how far away this is. I mean, right now space data centres would be the first practical application and they're still a long way off. The cost of getting orbit has certainly fallen a lot, but even the cost, even if Orbit access was free, the cost of doing the power beaming would still make it pretty hard to compete with land-based solar.

[00:35:15] Ed Whittingham: Yep. Well, it's neat to see as part of the IPO price of SpaceX last week was buoyed by people anticipating, uh, data centres in space and SpaceX being able to carry the data centres up there. Alright, well, we're dating, that's the time signature for, for this show. When Elon Musk was a trillionaire. I don't know if he still is, I'm sure he has a tough time estimating his whole net worth within now tens of billions of dollars on any given day.

We, uh, David and Sara, we are in the home stretch so's rapid fire. Few comments left, then we'll ring off. Knight Yyz two says, so you have a choice. Build your business in Canada and pay carbon tax and carbon capture and high industrial tax. Or go to the US and pay none of these. Where are you building brainiac, Sara, your brainiac.

Where are you gonna build? 

[00:36:11] Sara Hastings-Simon: I like brainiac as an insult. 

[00:36:13] Ed Whittingham: He, he actually wrote brainiac showing himself not to be a brainiac or just a lazy speller. Ooh. 

[00:36:21] Sara Hastings-Simon: Well, I mean, I, I gotta say I'm a bad speller myself, so, you know, I have some sympathy for that. But I'll, I'll respond to the question with two, two observations.

So one is, the way that the industrial Carbon Pricing scheme actually works in Canada is that, uh, you, you get a lot of so-called essentially free credits. So the actual cost, um, to a company is quite low. The margin, the idea is the marginal cost and the signal. And the second is that, you know, there's, there's been a lot of work done on this.

And so, uh, you know, Anton back in, uh, 2019 looked for carbon leakage from the EU ETS to surrounding, uh, markets and basically found none, right? You, you, there are certainly some examples for very resource intensive sectors. Um, and I think my, my point there would be, you know, that that has a limited run in a world that's working towards net zero.

So if we end up losing a few of the most highest carbon, uh, things like cement, um, it's. I don't wanna say it doesn't matter, it matters. But when we think about building the economy overall, making sure that we're future proofing it, um, you know, is, is I think important. And then combined with that fact that actually in, in most, if not all cases in the EU version that they looked at, there wasn't leakage to, you know, the surrounding countries that, that face lower environmental regulations.

[00:37:53] Ed Whittingham: Uh, it's interesting timing given that the federal government is just rewriting the policy, uh, on industrial carbon pricing, in part because oil and gas executives told them to, and saying on the record, hurting competitiveness. But of course, carbon price is just one line and a very long list of considerations of where you build.

And Canada Seals a bunch of advantages and other parts of that equation. 

[00:38:17] Sara Hastings-Simon: Yeah, and I, I, I have to make the point just 'cause you brought it up, but I think to argue that for the oil sands is, is really absurd. Right? Obviously the development of oil sands themselves, uh, is not gonna move to the US because the oil sands aren't in the US And the differences between developing a new project in the oil sands and developing a new project, oil in oil somewhere else are the fundamental differences are much more material than the, like scent on a barrel.

We're talking about in actual carbon costs. 

[00:38:50] Ed Whittingham: I did have a very senior oil and gas industry investor tell me a couple weeks ago, and on the Alberta separatism question, he said, listen, he's not a separatist. He was very clear about that. He's a federalist. But he said, if you're looking at it just myopically from what benefits the oil and gas sector, you would vote for separation every day, all day.

[00:39:10] Sara Hastings-Simon: I am surprised by that. Uh, I guess we've, we've, once again, we fail at rapid fire, but I think what, uh, what that work I cited earlier showed is that decisions about where, and, you know, what makes companies economic are about way more than one, one cost impact, input and things like, you know, governance and democracy and rule of law.

And, you know, functioning systems are all incredibly important. So, uh, the idea that that saving a few cents on the barrel, um, because Alberta separates somehow makes up for, you know, all of the mass of other other problems that, that it's gonna create is kind of mind blowing to me. 

[00:39:53] Ed Whittingham: Here. Here. Okay, we've got one on contrails.

So we had Seb Eastman on the show in early January, 2026. And part of that we had, uh, a long, uh, conversation on contrails avoidance. And a couple people think that's nonsense. So we've got Dan, Dan, 1958. He says, choosing what time you travel has no effect on airline schedules and thus has no effect on the climate and cookie.

Bob says, vapour trails reflecting the sunlight. Yeah, let's ban clouds at night. Next, David, I think this is right up your alley 

[00:40:32] David Keith: as it happens. I'm working on a popular book and I was just writing some paragraphs on this, so I'm just gonna read. High Flying jet aircraft often make contrails, which might reasonably be called artificial series clouds.

contrails can sometimes persist for days when the ice crystals in the contrails serve seeds for a region of humid air that was already trying to form cirrus like cirrus clouds. contrails combine reflective cooling with infrared heating travel tip. This means you cause more warming on a night flight when there's no sunlight to reflect than if you do the same route during the daytime.

So the answer is, unless one of these commentators lives in a world where the sun is the same day and night, they're just wrong. It's just really basic physics that the time of day matters because you only can reflect sunlight after sunlight there to reflect. 

[00:41:22] Ed Whittingham: Yeah, I, I, I agree wholeheartedly and, uh, I would just refer people back to that show because I think Seb Eastman is one of the, uh, the great academics on the topic.

And we talk about how Canada as part of its middle power, you know, muscle flexing under Prime Minister Kearney could actually play an outsize role through its control of the gander, oceanic control area airspace, uh, and as one agency that controls it. And we could really make a difference in climate if we flex those middle power muscles.

[00:41:56] David Keith: I gotta say, this is one where I'm trying to wonder where these comments are coming from, if it's connected to some kind of conspiracy theories about RAs. Because unlike some things we argue about, this seems like completely self-evident. Every listener has seen contrails from aircraft, and every listener can see that they're reflecting sunlight.

'cause that's why you see them. So they have to be reflecting of some sunlight back to space. There's not much more to say. 

[00:42:22] Ed Whittingham: Yeah, I don't know where it's coming from, but gave us something to talk about. So we're gonna go, I think this is our last, yeah, this is our last one. And this is the old trope. Canada is only 2% of global emissions, so why do anything on climate?

And it's, 

[00:42:37] David Keith: I have a simple answer. 

[00:42:38] Ed Whittingham: Okay. Okay. Go ahead. 

[00:42:40] David Keith: I'm only 0.01% of Kenmore's, um, garbage problem for domestic garbage. So why shouldn't I just throw my domestic garbage on the street? 

[00:42:49] Ed Whittingham: Yeah, I like that logic. Uh, Sara. 

[00:42:53] Sara Hastings-Simon: Yeah, I'll, I'll take the top down version and say, you know, it's important to understand that these, uh, tropes are all part of a general discourse of climate delay and climate denial.

And they, they continue to come up, as David said, you know, you can explain away having to do anything, uh, by cutting the world up or into small enough pieces. Um, and then the other thing that I would say is that there also is, I think, strong and emerging arguments now that, uh, simply acting as a free rider, um, actually is no longer even good economic policy as well as, as things starts to change.

Um, but it certainly I think, isn't in the ethos of Canada that, you know, we as a, as a nation would proudly stand up and say, we're just gonna free ride on everybody else's efforts. 

[00:43:45] Ed Whittingham: Yeah. And the weak point being, uh, moving from our share is too small to matter to, therefore our action is meaningless. And listen, I think we have to acknowledge openly the disproportionate importance of the US and China figuring out what to do on climate and reducing their emissions as the two largest emissions producing countries.

But they're not gonna move if everyone else says, oh, we're too small to matter and we're gonna sit back. It's one of those things where collective action really does matter. 

[00:44:14] Sara Hastings-Simon: And we're, and and, and it's not as if we're out somehow as a leader on this, right? We already are quite a laggard with, with what we're actually doing compared to a lot of other, other regions, so, 

[00:44:26] Ed Whittingham: yep, yep.

And you're right, just with the economic incentives, increasingly it's gonna creep into trade. 

[00:44:31] David Keith: I just wanna come back to the basics of the moral case. I think all the things you guys said are true, but it is simply ludicrous and profoundly unethical under any ethical system I'm aware of to make the argument that says that if I'm proportional for only 1% of the bad, then because it's not much bad, I don't have to do anything.

If people really apply that to their personal lives, the world would be a disaster. 

[00:44:53] Ed Whittingham: Yeah. Yeah. Being 2% of the problem doesn't make you 2% exempt from the consequences, and it doesn't make you 2% exempt for how you're gonna be treated by other countries, including Trading Partners.

If you enjoy this episode, check out our Host in the Hot Seat episode where EvC superfan Rob Tremblay turns the tables and interviews us.

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We'll be back in September with a brand new season of shows. And if you have ideas for show topics, I'll send them along to info@energyvsclimate.com. That's info@energyvsclimate.com. In the meantime, keep an eye on the EvC feed. We'll be dropping some bonus content over the summer. And as always, thanks for listening.

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