Year In Review: Colleen d’Entremont On How To Responsibly Grow Atlantic Canada’s Clean Energy Industry
To cap off 2021, Huddle sat down with some of the most important figures in Atlantic Canada’s business community – folks representing everyone from tourism operators to energy producers to housing advocates.
We asked each to reflect on the challenges, successes, and surprises that most impacted their industries, and the lives of Atlantic Canadians, this year.
In the latest of several conversations, Huddle reporter Rachel Smith spoke with Colleen d’Entremont, president of the Atlantica Centre for Energy
Her answers have been edited for length and clarity.
What is the most significant challenge your industry faced in 2021, and what impact did it have?
The most significant challenge was this transition to the goals set forward by the federal government for 2030, and how we’re starting that transition and it’s becoming real.
Prior to this year, it was sort of theoretical, and it was planning, and it’s going to come at some point, and this year it became real. People started seeing price shocks and changes in availability, changes in the price of energy. It was very exciting for some people and very scary for others.
From a policy standpoint, governments are now starting to see how this is going to play out. Consumers, small businesses, large businesses, are all realizing that behavior has to change now that industry has done the heavy lifting over the last 15 to 20 years.
And now the next eight years are all about individuals changing their own behavior and basically starting to walk the talk.
What is the coolest thing that happened in your industry in 2021?
I think the coolest thing that happened was how quickly the potential for hydrogen was accepted.
Before 2021, hydrogen was just sort of out there as an idea, as a concept that maybe someday in the future, somebody, somewhere will do something. Maybe 10 years ago it had been thought of and it just wasn’t commercially viable — it was ahead of its time. In 2021 it just came together.
So a Maritime hydrogen strategy was completed; an Atlantic Canadian hydrogen strategy was completed; a pan-Canadian hydrogen strategy was completed. There are a number of proponents that have hydrogen pilot projects ready to go, so it is all coming together.
The public, academia, proponents, government: they’re all combined in their efforts during 2021 to try and harness the potential for hydrogen as being part of the clean energy solution going forward.
From an economic development standpoint, there’s great potential in hydrogen moving forward as a whole new area for the Atlantic Canadian supply chain to participate in. That was pretty cool, how it can go from on the sidelines to right at the top of a clean energy alternative.
How do you think your industry most impacted the lives of Atlantic Canadians in 2021?
The four pillars of the energy sector are: clean, safe, affordable, reliable. There’s been so much effort on that one pillar, clean, that we forget about the affordable, reliable part. Clean has really been the focus over the last year, but one of the things that we realized during 2021 that impacts people is the affordable and reliable parts.
Take it away and all of a sudden reliability becomes number one. Then there’s affordable. We started, in the latter part of this year, on how much this transition to clean energy is going to cost. Who’s going to pay for this new clean energy as we transition away from carbon sources? And that’s the taxpayer and the ratepayer.
You need to have something else to make sure that you have 100 percent reliability for your energy. People are just starting to be impacted by the fact that there isn’t one best option: it’s all of the above, a little bit of everything is the way to ensure reliability. It is the same thing with affordability. If you go too fast, and get rid of everything and buy all new, it’s going to be extremely expensive.
I think the way that the public and others were impacted during 2021 was this realization that it’s not all about clean, it’s about clean, safe, affordable, reliable and you have to have all four, because if you don’t…it’s not going to work.
As some more expensive forms of energy came on stream and shortages occurred because infrastructure wasn’t ready for this transition, the price shocks were a wake-up call to some people that we’re going to have to rethink our business models and change our behavior much faster if we’re going to be able to work our way through the next 20 years.
What excites you most about what’s happening in your industry in 2022?
I am more excited about the next year and the upcoming eight years, 10 years, 20 years that quite frankly I have been probably for the last half-decade. There are so many really exciting things that are just getting underway that if we can leverage them, New Brunswick and the rest of Atlantic Canada are going to be in for some really good times.
We look at SMR technology – small modular reactors – that is a completely new way of looking at nuclear energy. It’s non-emitting, so from a greenhouse gas emission standpoint it is definitely the energy to look at going forward.
It could also be an economic development opportunity by New Brunswick and Nova Scotia and PEI participating in the supply chain of actually building these for other places in Canada, in the United States, and overseas. So there is a great technology development that we will be experiencing with also the potential for an energy source and economic development all in one — so very excited about the potential for developing next-generation nuclear energy here in New Brunswick.
I’m very excited about the potential for hydrogen being developed as a supply source here in Atlantic Canada, as well as the use and demand of hydrogen in order to help us meet our longer-term, greenhouse gas emission reduction targets.
One of the things that excites me is this transition from traditional suppliers of energy, such as refined petroleum — like at Irving Oil, or natural gas at Liberty Utilities, and in Nova Scotia, Heritage Gas, and the pipeline companies that transport the natural gas — we’re all looking at different models, different ways, different technologies going forward.
A lot of disruption will be experienced over the next decade that we are just at the forefront of now. It’s very exciting to see how we are going to navigate through this change and give what the people want, which is clean energy going forward but also delivering that to them in a safe, reliable, affordable way.
All of the Atlantica Centre for Energy’s top stories for 2021 involved reduced-emission technologies, why do you think people are so interested in that?
With the public, emissions are really engrossing the world right now — just like acid rain did, or the ozone layer.
That’s something that around the world is captivating people’s interest and it’s something that they can take a part in. They can do their own bit, they can walk more, they can turn the lights off, they can turn the heat down — their little ways that they can impact you know the betterment of the world so they feel that they can actually make a difference in reducing the emissions.
It’s a worldwide issue, and they feel more connected to the world by doing their part.
Other feature interviews in this series:
- Monette Pasher On How Covid Forever Changed Atlantic Canada’s Airline Industry
- Kathryn Lockhart On A New Crop Of Founders Shaking Up Atlantic Canada’s Startup Ecosystem
- Fredericton Chamber CEO Krista Ross On Supporting Businesses Through Tough Times
- Mayor Mike Savage On Managing Growth In Halifax
- Kevin Russell Reflects On Challenges For Rental Property Owners