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Innovative Energy Solutions in North America with Diego Mandelbaum, SVP at Creative Energy

• James Faulkner

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Unlock the secrets to revitalizing your mornings and your community's energy systems in this energizing episode. Our Toronto guest, Diego Mandelbaum, shares rich insights from the Russian Banya tradition, complete with tales of borscht and cabbage rolls, as we compare these authentic experiences with the more theatrical spa environments of Vancouver Island. 

Witness the remarkable transformation of Vancouver's downtown energy system, a journey from the smog-filled 1960s to today’s cleaner, sustainable cityscape. We delve into the pioneering efforts of Creative Energy, backed by BC Hydro and government initiatives, in electrifying and decarbonizing the city's heat generation system. Vancouver emerges as a global leader in urban decarbonization, driven by institutional customers' ESG commitments and ambitious municipal policies.

Explore the burgeoning global carbon market and the economic opportunities arising from environmental responsibility. We discuss how Canadian companies can leverage these markets, not only domestically but also through international projects. Learn about innovative district energy solutions in North America, showcasing creative, zero-carbon community solutions. The episode concludes with a look at the challenges and successes of Vancouver's ongoing infrastructure transformation, underscoring the city's commitment to a zero-carbon future.

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Speaker 1:

You went on a cold plunge this morning. That's right, wow. So at Kitts Beach. Kitts Beach, yeah. So for everyone who doesn't know, that's like the sort of entry point via English Bay to sort of get into the Pacific Ocean, even though it's kind of like Tofino's, like the Pacific Ocean and that stuff way over there, but it is, it's Pacific waters, and how cold was it.

Speaker 2:

I believe it was eight degrees.

Speaker 1:

Eight.

Speaker 2:

Eight. Yeah, but I'll tell you, go in there.

Speaker 1:

But it's eight outside.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, you go in the water, freezing cold. I cry like a baby. Then you come outside and it feels really warm.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

And then you feel fantastic the rest of the day.

Speaker 1:

I started doing that after playing tennis at Kitts in the morning and I'm like sweaty and hot from playing and then I went in the ocean. That was pretty cool.

Speaker 2:

Yeah well. So in Toronto I go out of my way to find a cold plunge to dip into, and so when I'm here, my colleague almost every day he goes into the ocean. So I decided let's wake up early, let's get with the sunrise and jump in nice and cold.

Speaker 1:

No better way to start Friday. So it seems like you're on the Joe Rogan Andrew Huberman circuit of listening to Cold Plunge slash.

Speaker 2:

You do the sauna as well. I do, actually I.

Speaker 1:

I have the the assault bike in there, like did you hear about Laird Hamilton? He does that. I did With oven mitts on.

Speaker 2:

I'm not quite there. Though I question if the oven mitts help or not, because they actually insulate you from the heat.

Speaker 1:

So I actually think that's a Well.

Speaker 2:

he does it because it doesn't burn his hands from the motion. The assault.

Speaker 1:

Bike's got up here.

Speaker 2:

So one thing I started doing a couple of years ago, initially through business development, and then I just fell in love with it and I started going to a Russian Russian Banya.

Speaker 1:

What is that?

Speaker 2:

That's right, beautiful place. You go in there. It looks like you're in the middle of Russia. You've got a bunch of saunas, cold plunges. You do that for a few hours and after that you get some borscht and cabbage rolls and it's amazing, wow.

Speaker 1:

And that's in Toronto. Yeah, they don't have those here.

Speaker 2:

I don't know, I haven't. Is somebody should open it if they don't have it here? It's amazing.

Speaker 1:

The cabbage, so you could have this whole kitchen situation with it too. Oh yeah, a whole kitchen situation. Is that place busy in Toronto?

Speaker 2:

It's surprisingly not that busy. But the people who go there, you see them there every single week. You build up your own sort of camaraderie with them, mostly Russians and Ukrainians and people from that part of the world and Finnish people.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

And it is. My wife still doesn't believe me that when I say it's a bathhouse and that it's literally saunas and cold plunges, she believes it's something else.

Speaker 1:

Oh, I see.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, but there's nothing untoward about it, it's just health.

Speaker 1:

That's good, that's good. So, yeah, that sounds like. I've got a friend of mine who owns a spa here, kingfisher, in Vancouver Island Crazy place. They've got all of these different pools, all these different saunas and it's all got video screens and rock in it. So it feels like you're real and you can change the. It's a little more theatrical than um. I think you're going to something pretty raw if it's uh it is.

Speaker 2:

It's not pretentious in the least. It's uh, it's like you're in old russia, oh but. But where is the place? On the island, because I'm in victoria next week uh, it's not near victoria. It is the other, uh northern part of the island, victoria's south I live in toronto, so for me the island is just you know one small island.

Speaker 1:

It's, yeah, vancouver Island's massive.

Speaker 2:

It's like when I work in the States like, oh, you're from Canada, do you know, joe? Joe's my friend in Canada. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, I hear that a lot. Yeah, so you're in Vancouver? Yeah, that's cool, I'm going New York, Okay, hello, so, yeah, all right. So we're going to chat today about decarbonization and creative energy, and this is your second time here and Andrew from Site Partners, who is one of the original hosts, reached out and said hey, you're going to be in Vancouver because you're from Toronto, and here we are, we're going to talk all about this stuff.

Speaker 2:

Let's do it, I look forward to it. I have to correct it. I live in Toronto and here we are, we're going to talk all about this stuff. Let's do it, I look forward to it.

Speaker 1:

I have to correct it. I live in Toronto. I'm not from Toronto, ah, okay. Well, don't diss it yet.

Speaker 2:

You never know, I'm not dissing it, I just I don't know where I'm from nowadays, but Toronto.

Speaker 1:

Digital nomad.

Speaker 2:

Yes.

Speaker 1:

Well said.

Speaker 2:

Nomad, I need the intellect part for that, so no, Okay. I'm missing that part, unfortunately.

Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Site. Visit Podcast Leadership and perspective from construction With your host, james Falkner. Business as usual, as it has been for so long now that it goes back to what we were talking about before and hitting the reset button. You know you read all the books, you read the email, you read Scaling Up, you read Good to Great. You know I could go on. We've got to a place where we found the secret serum.

Speaker 2:

We found the secret potion. We can get the workers in. We know where to get them.

Speaker 1:

Once I was on a job for a while and actually we had a semester concrete and I ordered, just hit me up on LinkedIn out of the blue and said he was driving from Oklahoma to Dallas to meet with me because he heard the Favourite Connect platform on your guys' podcast Own it, crush it and love it, and we celebrate these values every single day. Let's get down to it. Let's do it, these values every single day. Let's get down to it. All right, diego, how are you doing today? Terrific.

Speaker 2:

Good, how are you?

Speaker 1:

I am pretty good, crazy week, crazy week. So in from Toronto. The cool thing is we're going to chat a little bit about a project that I will do my best to sort of describe it for listeners, but it's a very interesting thing to Vancouverites and anybody who's been to Vancouver might have been to a live event. The live event district in Vancouver has the hockey arena and has the large football arena, but intertwined in that right slap back in the center of that is this building that people don't know what it is. They see steam coming out of the entire infrastructure of like utility slash, civic works of the city and how it all goes right. This is. It's a very interesting building.

Speaker 1:

So and Creative Energy. If you were to drive by there sign is outside. It's got a bunch of development going on. Last time was like five years ago we were chatting about this outside. It's got a bunch of development going on. Last time was like five years ago where we were chatting about this. Let's just explain that project for the listeners, what it does. If you were to see a map of this, you see the impact throughout the entire downtown, which is kind of like this peninsula-ish False Creek is kind of fake at the end of Main Street. It's kind of been manufactured that way, but it's basically a big peninsula with water either side, so there's a whole bunch of stuff that needs to happen there. Yeah, I don't know if I did that any justice, but maybe let's give us the rundown of that operation, what it does, from five years ago and to sort of where we're at today.

Speaker 2:

Sure, I'll start off by saying you bought our propaganda because it's actually just a giant sauna.

Speaker 1:

It's a giant sauna.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

Okay.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. So we just tell people it's a big utility plant that heats all of downtown Vancouver, that it's provided service for 55 years, but the reality is we just do that for a sauna.

Speaker 1:

Okay.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's easy.

Speaker 1:

You just do it for a sauna, that's it.

Speaker 2:

We just built a transmission line right to the plant just so we could electrify the sauna.

Speaker 1:

Okay, okay, let's expand, okay, expand.

Speaker 2:

I tell a lot of bad jokes, so that'll continue this podcast. It will.

Speaker 1:

They're very dry Dry to the point where I need Do you want some water?

Speaker 2:

I'll have some water, or preferably the Bushmills.

Speaker 1:

That is happening.

Speaker 2:

Good Sure, I probably won't give you the background from five years ago. I'll give you the background from 55 years ago to five years ago to today, but I'll be quick, I promise. So just by thank you by way of background, back in the 50s and the 60s, downtown Vancouver was really struggling with smog and pollution issues. For those who are not familiar with Vancouver, it's beautiful, but it's at the bottom of the valley and back in that era a lot of the buildings were using coal or fuel to heat the buildings. So that created a bunch of pollution. And cheers, cheers. That created a bunch of pollution.

Speaker 2:

And so our founders back in the 60s had this fabulous idea. They said look, why don't we get rid of coal and fuel oil from the streets of Vancouver and sell steam for heating so people can decommission their building scale furnaces? That happened in 1968, where our founders bought the old Vancouver printing press building, which is right beside those buildings that you were mentioning the arena, the football stadium. They cut a deal with a couple of buildings in the downtown core to be our customers and in 1968, the first private district energy company in Canada was started and it was called Central Heat. Back then, 1968, until 2014,. That really grew organically as any other utility, connecting another building to another to another, all with an underground steam network and a big generation plant that now heats all of downtown Vancouver.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so can we just come a little closer to the mic? Yes, so with that, how is this being distributed? How is this coming into a building? So it's coming in as steam.

Speaker 2:

It is.

Speaker 1:

Okay, and then how is that being converted to energy? Is it just heating the buildings? That's it.

Speaker 2:

Simple as that. Steam comes in, it goes through a heat exchanger. On the other side of that heat exchanger our customers circulate water which gets heated up and they use that for domestic hot water and for space heating.

Speaker 1:

So most people have no idea this is happening under there. No, sir, it's pretty cool. So, and then what kind of delivery? I mean, like, are we talking like high? Obviously high pressure you know what size diameter pipes are we talking about here is going underneath the city.

Speaker 2:

I'll get the exact answer wrong, but it's somewhere in the 18 inch size. I'm sure my engineers will tell me after 18 inches.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, holy crap.

Speaker 2:

Okay, I'm sure my engineers will tell me I got that wrong. Maybe it's 20, maybe it's 16, but they're big pipes.

Speaker 1:

Right. So it's a pretty big diameter pipe that's more of like a running fluid kind of a pipe diameter.

Speaker 2:

It is Rather than a pressurized. Yeah, but it is pressurized very high pressure, Holy crap.

Speaker 1:

That's.

Speaker 2:

It is, but we serve 45 million square feet of real estate. So think about the hospital, st Paul's, the arena, commercial offices, all of those buildings in downtown about 200 plus of them. They're heated from our central plant Crazy. So that got built up over slowly as a utility over about 50 years. Okay, and when the company changed hands in 2014, it was bought by West Bank who's a developer, right. West Bank came with's a developer Right.

Speaker 2:

West Bank came with this vision, which really did two things. One was how do we decarbonize downtown Vancouver? So we have all of this infrastructure, one central plant. If we can switch the fuel source of that central plant, we then have an impact downstream on every single building. To decarbonize, yeah. To decarbonize, yeah. And then the other part of the vision that they brought to the company when we rebranded from central heat to creative energy was how do we turn this from a sleepy operating utility to a growth company to stand up these district energy systems across North America?

Speaker 2:

We'll put that to the side for now, yeah, but after 2014, we got to work to start thinking how the heck do we decarbonize an existing plant that serves 215 customers that we can't lose service at all? We did a whole bunch of diligence analysis, looked at biomass, looked at heat pumps, a whole bunch of different things and ultimately what we landed on was that we could work with BC Hydro and a few levels of government. We could fund a brand new transmission line that goes right to our plant. We, as Creative Energy, will pay for a 50 megawatt substation which is getting built right now, and the combination of the large load that we have, the transmission line and some help that we've gotten from the government. It's allowed us to actually electrify our heat generation, decarbonize about 40% of our annual heat production incredibly economically, and that's the project that you see today.

Speaker 1:

Wow, okay, and that's the project that you see today. Wow, okay, so the initial energy, um, that is um, so from years ago. Uh, that the steam generated years ago but, like, when this sort of like the, the, the initial stage of this project and this was so, how is that being generated in the beginning? So this is steam. From what energy source?

Speaker 2:

Natural gas, natural gas okay, which is still the case today.

Speaker 1:

Okay, okay. So and the natural gas I mean? Isn't natural gas still considered to be carbonized to some degree?

Speaker 2:

Carbonized yes, it is a fossil-based fuel.

Speaker 1:

But when we say decarbonizing something is, it Is that. Are we just kicking that idea down the field?

Speaker 2:

So think of it as simpler than decarbonizing. We're fuel switching Today we're on natural gas. Tomorrow we'll be on electricity.

Speaker 1:

Okay.

Speaker 2:

And the electricity produced in British Columbia is virtually carbon free because it's from hydroelectricity.

Speaker 1:

So if you think about it from a large energy, Do we have enough of that though Not right now, the grid's going to be overrun from a large energy Do we have?

Speaker 2:

enough of that, though Not right now, because I think the grid's going to be overrun, isn't it?

Speaker 1:

Do we have to make another dam now?

Speaker 2:

Well, so it's interesting. The grid is forecasted to be overrun, so there's not enough generation, Right? However, BC Hydro has put out a call for power, so they've actually opened up the power market to have independent producers sell into the grid with renewable projects. I see okay.

Speaker 1:

So yeah, like geothermal, all that kind of stuff.

Speaker 2:

Geothermal, biomass, wind, solar, whatever makes economic sense. So, yes, the grid's going to have incredible strain, but as any market adapts, you're going to have more suppliers come to the market as well, so I don't think that's going to be an issue.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so the initial decarbonization was going from coal fire, which is like dirty as it gets. That's right To a clean and obviously the technology has come a long way in terms of energy transfer from liquid natural gas. Is it yes, Okay?

Speaker 2:

So LNG? I guess they call that. No sorry, it's just normal natural gas. Oh, just normal natural gas.

Speaker 1:

So stuff that comes out of your stove. Precisely right, okay, and you guys are getting that now, just like the services to other buildings would, for all of the infrastructure for a high-rise. Precisely right, okay, so from there, then you are now powering the steam, correct, correct To generate the steam, and then that steam is then pressurized steam is being delivered to other buildings where they are converting that into.

Speaker 1:

Hot water Hot water because it's going around. I see Okay, so that's for the hot water, and is it also for the heat in the buildings as well?

Speaker 2:

It is so we heat up hot water how our customers tend to use it, and every customer is a little bit different. They circulate the non-potable hot water and they use it for typically two sources. Okay, domestic hot water, so for showering things like that and for space heating.

Speaker 1:

Okay.

Speaker 2:

We'll have some customers, like St Paul's Hospital, who use our steam for process loads sterilization, but for the most part it's hot water and space heating is the end use of our product Crazy.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so do you know much about the other, what they're doing the other side of the Cambie Bridge? That other steam I do? What is that?

Speaker 2:

So on the other side of the Canby Bridge, that other steam I do. What is that? So on the other side of the Canby Bridge, that is another district energy system that was built for the 2010 Olympics.

Speaker 1:

Okay.

Speaker 2:

So that's called Southeast Falls Creek Neighborhood Energy Utility, yeah, and that's owned by the city of Vancouver. Okay, there they are extracting heat from the sewer lines, yeah, and then they're topping it up with natural gas boilers and then they're circulating that through an underground network much like ours. But their underground network is already hot water, ours is steam.

Speaker 1:

Ah, okay.

Speaker 2:

Over time, ours will become hot water, because that's far more efficient. It also opens up a bunch more sources that we can plug into it that are renewable. Yeah, but steam is a bit of a legacy medium from the 60s, so that's what we are now modernizing.

Speaker 1:

Cool Okay.

Speaker 2:

And maybe just a bit of a self-serving pitch. At some point the city system and our systems should come together, they should integrate and we should be able to share energy between the two for the benefit of all of our customers collectively. So we're not there today, but there will be some future state, I believe, where those two systems are tied together as most utilities grow, and they should be interconnected.

Speaker 1:

So I would guess, besides some environmental slash, energy subsidies from the government, you guys are all privately funded, et cetera.

Speaker 2:

Precisely right.

Speaker 1:

Right, Whereas that city of Vancouver we're all paying for that.

Speaker 2:

Exactly right.

Speaker 1:

Whereas you guys are of a business to run.

Speaker 2:

Exactly, right, okay, yeah.

Speaker 1:

That's pretty cool. And the fact that city of Vancouver has done that and then your organization is doing that and West Bank's still involved. West Bank's still involved, gillespie and all those guys yes, and West Bank's still involved, west Bank's still involved, gillespie and all those guys yes. So the fact that is this like an en vogue, political pressure to decarbonize and et cetera, like sort of what is the? I guess there's positive pressure there, there's encouragement, obviously there's a tax break and there's also grants, all those other kinds of things that you guys get to enjoy. As senior vice president of development, you probably know about all the kind of money that comes in in terms of that stuff. So what are the politically? Is it something that all parties are into doing, or is it a bipartisan kind of interest, or do you have some people? What about the Greens? Are they like? We don't like this, they do like this.

Speaker 2:

What's the deal there? The Greens like green, that one's easy. Typically liberal type governments, left-leaning governments, they will largely support climate action. Conservative governments less so. So I would say, politically it is a bit bipartisan. But maybe we'll take a step back and just look at it societally first and then we get down to policy. So, societally, I believe that by and large, most people have now come to terms that we do have a climate crisis on our hands. You can argue all day long is this a 10-year emergency? Is it a 100-year emergency? And there's plenty of good debates there, if you can get past a lot of that rhetoric.

Speaker 1:

I always ask people one thing when they talk about climate, I say can you ski on the glacier in Blackcomb in the summer anymore?

Speaker 2:

No, so it impacts you.

Speaker 1:

I mean it used to be there.

Speaker 2:

Now the upside. I was in a t-shirt and shorts in Toronto last week, so there's some nice things, but the I mean jokes aside, the impact of it over time is going to be disastrous, and it's going to impact those who are already marginalized first. So I think we do have a societal responsibility to address it. Some people maybe still argue that, but I think by and large, our society has agreed that, yes, we have to do something about it. So then, when you look at climate, what do you do? We've got to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions, or at least largely reduce them, and then mitigate the impacts of global warming Very broadly.

Speaker 2:

You can kind of imagine that transportation is about responsible for maybe a third of the global emissions, Industry is another third and buildings is about a third. So we can't help with transportation or industry, but we can sure help with buildings. And so when you look at decarbonizing buildings, there's a lot of support for that politically, depending what party. But what's really interesting, even from a free market perspective, what we're finding? A lot of our customers, our institutional customers, who are owned by pension funds or insurance or sovereign wealth funds. Like a lot of the buildings that you would see downtown Vancouver, they have their own ESG reasons why they want to decarbonize. Sometimes it's because it increases the valuation of their buildings. Sometimes it's because of the commitments they've made to their investors. Sometimes it's altruistic, but we're finding that, beyond whatever policies in place and support whether it's the carrot or the stick from government that we have we are hearing from our customers. We want low carbon renewable energy. Yeah, that's it.

Speaker 2:

So then you kind of get into the political sphere with the federal government that we have in place right now, which I my prediction probably won't be there too much longer, but there has been quite a bit there policy-wise that has helped out. So there's the carbon tax, which really is it's been politicized far too much, but it's really just pricing and externality, which I think is actually a market solution. But that might go away. But that's really helped to equalize low carbon energy compared to conventional energy. Beyond that, the government's now come out with clean technology investment tax credits.

Speaker 1:

Okay, that's cool yeah.

Speaker 2:

And what that does for us is any new investment that sort of matches the criteria from the government.

Speaker 2:

It actually gives us about a 30% refund on our capital costs, which we then flow down right to our customers to make renewable energy more affordable. Then you sort of get to a level below that at the provincial level where they have their own carbon tax regime, which may be changing which we heard Ebi say for the first time depending what the feds do. And then you have the municipal policy, which is probably the most aggressive carbon policy in all of Canada, if not North America. The city of Vancouver has been very bold on what they want to do, so we have a bunch of support from policy from that perspective, yeah. But I just strongly believe that, even if all that goes away, we are hearing that the market is telling us we want low carbon energy, so we'll take the tailwinds when they're there. I don't believe we need the policy help. I believe that we actually, based on free market economics, that we're finding that there's a value proposition to provide customers with low carbon energy.

Speaker 1:

Lots there, Lots there. That was a very, very deep response. Okay, so I think that there were. I heard this thing that said that, in terms of greenhouse gases, that in a matter of days I think I don't know if this is accurate or not, but I think it was like within three and a half days we get all the crap from India and China over here just because of trade winds. So it's like you know, if only we could just deal with the carbon that we have and vertically make air borders straight up from our shores and they didn't flow anywhere else, that would be one thing, but this is like a global thing we're trying to deal with.

Speaker 1:

So it really is, I think, at this stage, a leadership initiative to saying look, this is what we're doing, Are you guys going to follow suit, et cetera. Or are we going to continue to suck your fumes three days later all the time? Or is this going to get better on our shores because we're sending you cleaner stuff and you're sending us dirty stuff back? So that exchange via trade winds is probably happening. So there's a political PR part of this as well, and the result is positive because it doesn't hurt anyone. It's good, but it's also from an international trade policy and international energy policies, international reputations. It contributes to that, too, that Vancouver is a green city based on the things you guys are doing. So what are your thoughts around how we refer to how clean the air is here due to what we're doing with Creative Energy and how you guys are decarbonizing the energy for?

Speaker 1:

So how many buildings are you know downtown are you dealing with right now? 200 plus 200, that's a lot. It is, that's a lot of buildings. I mean, how many buildings are there downtown? 600?.

Speaker 2:

Maybe, and of the 200 we have, they're the big buildings, they're the big ones.

Speaker 1:

They're the St.

Speaker 2:

Paul's Hospitals, BC Place, Rogers Arena the new Amazon headquarters the Post.

Speaker 1:

it's the big ones, yeah, crazy okay and they opt into this all the time. So how does the procurement process work from their side? When they're creating new building, they're making modifications, rest, no mods, whatever they're doing, and then do they reach out to you guys. You guys have account people that call out. Or are these just sort of behind closed doors relationships that happen?

Speaker 2:

All of the above, but if I can, I'd like to take a step back. If you don't mind, I want to unpack a bit of what you were sharing about India and pollution.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, go for it.

Speaker 2:

So there's a few things there and I think, first, it's helpful to differentiate pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. Okay, technically, yes, greenhouse gas emissions you can consider pollution, but I think, when you're thinking of dirty air, when you can't see your own hands in front of you, if you're in certain cities, that's a bit different than greenhouse gas, where you don't really don't have much of a health impact. It has a global warming impact. I see, okay, and you're exactly right that it's a global problem. We could right that it's a global problem. Canada could eliminate every single greenhouse gas emission tomorrow. It's a drop in the bucket compared to the US, compared to China, compared to India, but I think your point is exactly right. It's a leadership role.

Speaker 2:

If countries like Canada are not taking climate action, then why would a country like India take climate action or China take climate action? So I believe that we have that responsibility, but it goes a bit further than that as well. There's actually a huge economic development opportunity there. So I believe that we have that responsibility, but it goes a bit further than that as well. There's actually a huge economic development opportunity there. So I mentioned these investment tax credits. That was actually a response to the US and their Inflation Reduction Act, which introduced similar investment tax credits, and if Canada didn't follow suit, there would have been a capital fight from Canada to the US and we would have seen a bunch of renewable investment down there. So there's actually this market that's developing and a bunch of capital is coming to Canada because of this and to the US because of the clean revolution Interesting Okay.

Speaker 2:

So there's a real financial case for that as well. But now the other really interesting thing. I'm going to mess up the number, but I've been following the COP conference that's happening.

Speaker 2:

I don't know somewhere in Europe that happens every year. And they have finally come to a resolution on having a global carbon market, and that's really important, because what it says is, if we have a global issue with carbon, maybe it makes more sense to decarbonize in Canada and trade emission or decarbonize in India. Canadians pay for it and we get those carbon credits, because if it's lower cost per baited carbon to do a project in India, we shouldn't just focus on Canada. And so it actually lets you trade carbon across the world so that we can bring India along, we can bring China along, we can bring some other countries along where they may not be in a position to decarbonize themselves because they're trying to get out of poverty and trying to improve energy security. And so there's actually been some giant progress on how first world and developing countries can work together for the benefit of the world.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so does that mean Canadian companies can work with those companies?

Speaker 2:

That's right. So now as an investor, so you can do projects over there or not. We can, we wouldn't. That's not our business. I understand. But broadly, if you're an investor and you're saying I want to invest $100 million to decarbonize and make whatever investment criteria I have on that, if I put that in Canada I might get some carbon outcome. But maybe I put that in India and I get a deeper carbon outcome and then I get those credits Okay. And so now we can actually help.

Speaker 1:

So these credits are basically dollars, right?

Speaker 2:

These credits are dollars.

Speaker 1:

Right, okay.

Speaker 2:

And so now we're able to have better efficacy of where the capital goes to decarbonize, and to be able to bring the developing countries along with us.

Speaker 1:

So the fact that those credits are a market and an index basically well, not an index, but that they're essentially it's not that much different than gold it's going to have a price. Will there be a price to that, like a trading price of those credits?

Speaker 2:

There will be. Is there now? There is.

Speaker 1:

Okay, do you know what that is?

Speaker 2:

I don't. One of the problems we have right now in the carbon markets is there's all sorts of different standards and the quality of those credits can be very questionable.

Speaker 1:

So they're going to make a standard and make that market and that's going to be very strict and it'll basically be like gold.

Speaker 2:

Ironically, I believe it's called the gold standard. Okay, and there are a bunch of standards out there right now.

Speaker 1:

That's pretty cool, so that that really opens up everything in order to to have kind of that ubiquitous like thing around a carbon credit Cause carbon credits like I've seen over the years these things be, I don't know. I mean, there's kind of like the Foghazi kind of. You know, plant a bunch of trees and do this and that's going to count for this. You, you know, have an airplane that has less than this and it's going to be these carbon credits and it's kind of like it was kind of this wild west kind of situation. I always find that was a lot of nefarious. People got in there and were sort of making money all over the place with this stuff and it was kind of hard to put your finger on what was legit, what was not, what was actually being realized that's a a very astute observation that I completely agree with.

Speaker 1:

Right.

Speaker 2:

You know, when you're looking at carbon credits. There's a bunch of things there and this is not my expertise at all, so I might start to speak a bit outside my competency. But you want additionality, meaning that you are doing something that is reducing the carbon emissions compared to the business as usual. Yeah, and you want permanency. And so, as an example, imagine you plant a bunch of trees in the forest. What if they burn down next year? So how do you make sure that the carbon investment is a permanent investment?

Speaker 1:

We have some gas problems with the gas shocks in our chairs. Here. You just dropped like three inches Boom.

Speaker 2:

I got to lose a bit of weight.

Speaker 1:

I will say you handled that very well.

Speaker 2:

The seat dropped and you're like okay, I guess this is the new normal.

Speaker 1:

I was trying to get to eye level with you. Well, you are tall. I'm not as tall as you are. I'm wearing heels. You're wearing heels. Does that count when you're sitting down? You have higher knees right now than I do.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, actually, maybe to share a little bit of a joke. We had a wonderful event that we hosted last week in Toronto, a business development event with post-secondary institutions talking about decarbonizing the campuses. A colleague of mine, who's a little bit shorter than I am. Every single photo that I was in with him I was making sure I was on my tippy toes, just to be a real prick.

Speaker 1:

Oh nice, yeah Nice. That's the kind of guy I am. That's a nice move. Yeah, that is good. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2:

Dehydronization Dehydronization and decarbonization.

Speaker 1:

All in one.

Speaker 2:

We're on to something.

Speaker 1:

We are, we are All right. So tell me a little bit about like you have to get into all different types of interactions through the day, like what is a senior vice president of development? So that means you are working on all the new stuff that's going on, or are you dealing with existing things? Take me through that.

Speaker 2:

Happy to Both is the answer.

Speaker 1:

Pull this a little closer, there we go. You can just pull the arm. There we go. Nice, okay, go.

Speaker 2:

Both is the answer.

Speaker 1:

Both okay, so you can think of our business in two ways. Both is the answer, so you can think of our business in two ways.

Speaker 2:

We have a very mature utility here in downtown Vancouver that we are reinvesting in modernizing, decarbonizing. That's a big chunk of my job, that's why you're here. That's why I'm here. Actually, that's not true. I had a board meeting this week. Still have a job, so that's good, and we've got a fantastic team here in Vancouver that takes care of everything from the business development and account management to the regulatory proceedings, to the engineering figuring out the right solutions, so on and so forth.

Speaker 2:

That certainly takes, I don't know about a quarter of my time is focusing on this, our major asset here and beyond that, it's developing new systems across Ontario, british Columbia. We're in Seattle now. We're testing an opportunity in Florida, we're looking at a few opportunities in San Jose and Texas. So my job is quite varied.

Speaker 1:

Florida. Wow Like how close to the ocean.

Speaker 2:

Right by the airport of Orlando.

Speaker 1:

So is that near the ocean? I don't know Orlando very well, I don't know.

Speaker 2:

Okay, there's a lot of lakes there, or, sorry, a lot of ponds there, but that's for flood mitigation. They're man-made.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I was going to say because, yeah, how far underground does the downtown one go?

Speaker 2:

Well, that's an interesting question. The redevelopment that we're doing downtown we go about seven stories underground for our new plant, which will be below ground, and then our distribution. So our roughly 15 kilometers of steam piping that we have today, that we are slowly modernizing to hot water piping, those are two three meters below the streets.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I was going to say, because it's not that far down.

Speaker 2:

No, relatively shallow utility, which is good for Florida.

Speaker 1:

That's right. Yeah, because it's interesting Just to hop into that for a second. The Vancouver plant. The building is probably, I think, to the top deck. There is probably 40 feet above the street below.

Speaker 2:

That's about right Four stories.

Speaker 1:

Right, yeah, about that, and then you guys probably go another few feet under that.

Speaker 2:

Many feet under that.

Speaker 1:

Down below the 40 though. Yeah, that's right, and if Because you can almost cut through that because it goes way down right there. Right, Because there's a high point in the city. Yes, like where the post office and all that is.

Speaker 2:

So if you actually what I would suggest you do if you go there and you look at our plant from Beattie Street, which is kind of the front door of our building, that's grade. From that street we go maybe 40 feet above that. But then if you go behind that, where BC Place is, then you'll see that there's an incredibly big drop in grade that goes down another four stories or so. Yeah, that's what I was mentioning yeah, and then we go down another five or six stories above that.

Speaker 1:

That makes sense, yeah, okay. So a lot of your day you're dealing with the current projects as IE, you're here for the board meeting and then when, so you're traveling to Florida checking out all this stuff. Yep, so maybe take us through that one. So what kind of a project is that? How is the? Is it again natural gas?

Speaker 2:

No. So I should clarify almost any new project that we're taking on, it's either low carbon or no carbon, which means for the most part, there is no natural gas.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so electric then.

Speaker 2:

Electric, but I think that actually undersells it. So I'll just give you a very quickly flavor of some of the things that we do. I've been asked many times. So, as an example, we built a small district energy system in West Vancouver that serves the Horseshoe Bay development. Really, where's that Horseshoe Bay? I'll have to send you a map. I don't know. I can't put it in proximity to here.

Speaker 1:

Is it in Horseshoe Bay? Yeah, Sewells.

Speaker 2:

Marina.

Speaker 1:

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2:

Okay, yeah, so it's a small project for us, because West Bank has a project there.

Speaker 1:

That's right, so it's right near that Well, it serves that project.

Speaker 2:

Oh, wow, yeah, so they built their development there, and the solution we came up with there was actually to submerge giant heat exchangers into the Pacific Ocean and use the ocean as a heat to the ocean, depending if we're heating or cooling. Bloody hell.

Speaker 1:

Okay, that's pretty crazy. So for those listening, so one of the you know groups involved in this is a renowned developer called West Bank and they have probably done the most iconic buildings in the city and this. We have a ferry terminal that serves Vancouver Island and there they have done a large sort of a community townhouses. I think it's maybe a 12-story complex, I think.

Speaker 2:

There's four or five mid-rises. I think they're a bit taller than 12 stories.

Speaker 1:

They're not super tall.

Speaker 2:

Not super tall, but they kind of hug the tree line.

Speaker 1:

That's right. It's not so obtrusive to other residents of Westman there. But anyway. So the fact that that's going in not only is it going in to serve and sort of I don't want to say gentrify, but it's moving Horseshoe Bay it's this beautiful bay with the ferries and stuff is to sort of upscale it, if you will. It's always been kind of not that exciting there, but in addition to that you're bringing on all of this energy infrastructure and all this innovation. Was there a lot of things that hadn't been done in any of the projects before that you guys implemented in that project?

Speaker 2:

I don't think that's been done anywhere else in North America. As far as I'm concerned, like the ocean kind of situation that's pretty cool. Yeah, the technology is not new. The technology has been used before. Our secret sauce is applying the technology in creative ways, right, Creative energy.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, gotcha, but that's one example. And just for the engineers out there, I mean we, for every kilowatt of electricity that we purchase, we can then produce three or four kilowatts of heating energy, because we're just using electricity to power a heat pump and suck heat from the ocean. So it's incredibly efficient 300% efficiency, 400% efficiency. Sucking heat from the ocean, sucking heat from the ocean. There is heat in the ocean, there is here. Anything that is above absolute zero has heat. That's weird. I know.

Speaker 1:

So you're saying that your coal plunger is eight degrees. I would say like, and that's English Bay. So it's going to be like six in Horseshoe Bay, because it's deep and rock.

Speaker 2:

Still a bunch of heat in there, brother.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, Wow crazy.

Speaker 2:

That Bushmills bottle that we had there ton of heat.

Speaker 1:

By the time you're done.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that's true, but just to give you another, because we're agnostic on technology, as long as we get the right outcomes, which is always the same combination of affordability, sustainability and resiliency. But another project that I'm super excited about is the Senok development just outside of the downtown peninsula. Yeah, okay. So for those of you who are not familiar, that's on the original Squamish Nation land and it's being developed by the Squamish Nation and that will be the largest purpose-built rental community that's zero carbon in all of Canada. I believe it's 11 towers, 6,000 homes, I believe Maybe it's 3,000. I could get it wrong In either case. So it's all rental, it's all rental Crazy. All zero carbon. We are standing up.

Speaker 2:

It's in construction right now a zero carbon district energy system that sucks heat out of Metro Vancouver sewer line and then repurposes it for heating and domestic hot water and that will heat all 11 towers. And the nation is actually a partner with us on the district energy piece, so that they're likely going to be co-investing with us. So it's a wonderful project.

Speaker 1:

So it's heating it but it's not doing the electricity, not electricity, that's still coming from.

Speaker 2:

So it's heating it but it's not doing the electricity. Not electricity that's still coming from hydro. It's heating and cooling.

Speaker 1:

Heating and cooling, so it's zero.

Speaker 2:

Zero carbon heating and cooling. That's most of the heat's coming from sewer, so cooling, is it air? Conditioned. Yep, wow, anything. Vancouver today, that's new will be air conditioned.

Speaker 1:

It has to be.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, again, making summers a lot hotter. Yeah, if you go out to some of the work we're doing in Ontario, we have a partnership with Minto, who's a pretty renowned developer out there. They're building five residential high-rise condos. We're building a giant geothermal system that's all interconnected with heat pumps and will heat and cool all of their buildings, again without using carbon. We're looking at a project in Seattle where we're actually taking waste heat from a hospital and then distributing that to nearby residences. So there's a whole mix and match of technologies that we use, but in every case now, if it's not low carbon or no carbon, we're not interested in pursuing it.

Speaker 1:

What I like about your business model is because of the creative side. You're dealing with projects you have to service over time. Projects you have to service over time. So you basically have a built-in service contract for however knows how many years, because it's a special sauce. You guys are putting this thing together. Do you have some you're? I would imagine it's not the components that are original, it's just how you put them all together.

Speaker 2:

You go read a book, no word is created by the author, but how all those words come together to tell a story.

Speaker 1:

And that's what you guys are doing Same thing with us.

Speaker 2:

Right, we've not invented a heat pump, we've not invented a heat exchanger, but we are pretty creative in how we put it together, how we fund it, the commercial structuring.

Speaker 1:

That's the stuff that we do well, and is there a proprietary element to this?

Speaker 2:

There's not. There's not.

Speaker 1:

There's not. There's not, it's just. You guys are just magicians at using what you got in your hands.

Speaker 2:

We're persistent.

Speaker 1:

Nice yeah.

Speaker 2:

And I will mention there are a lot of players who are trying to get into the space, a lot of large capital institutions, from private equity to pension funds, because the world is really going towards district energy as we are decarbonizing and it's one of the few solutions that really make sense, but it's tough to figure out the business.

Speaker 2:

And so we've seen a lot of people trying to get into the space and do it unsuccessfully. So we feel very privileged that we've had a 55-year head start on what will invariably be a far more competitive market in the future.

Speaker 1:

You guys just invest in all the startup ones and then have part of them.

Speaker 2:

No, we thought it's easier to start them up ourselves.

Speaker 1:

Oh, there you go, even better. So you guys have a fund for that, for new startups.

Speaker 2:

Well, we're well-funded. So we have West Bank, who's one of our partners. The other one is Instar, who's a private equity infrastructure fund, and so as we're developing new projects, we bring our own capital so that our customers don't have to pay for a penny of it. We get our equity from our shareholders. We raise debt from typically syndicated bank facilities, sometimes from below market sources, whatever is most economical, and then we make the investments so our customers don't have to, and then we recover that over 30, 40 years as a utility.

Speaker 1:

Wow, crazy. So they don't even have to pay for this, they don't, jeez? So what is next on the path? You said you had the Florida project, what else and where else?

Speaker 2:

So we're in Vancouver. Of course we just broke ground in Kamloops, british Columbia, with our partners Thompson Rivers University. Okay, yeah, They've set bold targets that by 2030, course we just broke ground in Kamloops, british Columbia, with our partners Thompson.

Speaker 1:

Rivers.

Speaker 2:

University. Okay, yeah, they've set bold targets that by 2030, they want to eliminate scope one and scope two carbon emissions. And we are going to help them do that by standing up a brand new thermal utility that uses air. Essentially, we suck heat out of the air, put that into hot water, circulate to the buildings, decommission the borders. That's really exciting. That should be built in the next year and a bit. In Toronto we are building our North Oak project in partnership with Minto. We've started up and are now operating our Mirvish Village project in Toronto, which is a co-generation plant in a microgrid that serves about a million square feet of purpose-built rental and affordable housing. In Seattle, we have a partnership with Swedish Providence, which is a health system to decarbonize their hospital campus and then to extend that to serve the neighborhood. We have the work that we're doing in Florida that's still early stages with a partner there where we're looking at a large geothermal system to mostly cool their buildings because they don't use a lot of heating.

Speaker 2:

Right? Um, also looking at integrating solar PV things like that? We heating Right. Also looking at integrating solar PV things like that. We're dabbling in San Jose trying to integrate data centers and get waste heat from that to heat building. Jeez, that's cool If you ask what's next? North American domination, but in the most altruistic way you could imagine.

Speaker 1:

Nice. So I'm going to state the obvious here. This is pretty much only about heating and cooling A little bit of power, mostly heating A little bit of power. So where does the power part come in?

Speaker 2:

I'll give you a couple examples Mirvish Village. So that's a project where we are generating power on site and we use natural gas for that. I don't know that we'd make that investment decision today, but this plan was done back in 2016. But we'll produce power on site and then the waste heat from the power production is what we use to heat the buildings.

Speaker 1:

Gotcha okay.

Speaker 2:

So that's an example where we're not the primary power producer. We're still tapping into Toronto Hydro, but we have some power production.

Speaker 1:

Right.

Speaker 2:

Some of the work we're doing in Florida. We're looking at integrating solar PVs into our district energy system so that we have to purchase less power to drive for heat pumps. So it's those kinds of things that we are exploring. But what's become really interesting for us, too is on the power kind of side of this is that power utilities are really struggling to keep up with this demand as you mentioned earlier.

Speaker 2:

And they've always had. In almost any jurisdiction they've had a mandate for demand side management, which is saying instead of investing in more generation and distribution transmission, demand side management which is saying, instead of investing in more generation and distribution transmission, you should invest in efficiency, so you can use your capacity better.

Speaker 2:

They're now coming to realize that district energy is essentially a giant demand side management program so that if we can work with power utilities, we can actually find a way to efficiently electrify cities, but doing it with much less investment upstream. And so we're starting to see the sector coupling between heat utilities like ourselves which are rather rare in North America, very common in Europe and power utilities, and I truly believe over the next 10 years those two things are going to have to work together to be able to get the outcomes that we need for society and energy security, while also decarbonizing.

Speaker 1:

Nice, okay, that's cool. So just so we can just review. So like this Kamloops, was it Kamloops?

Speaker 2:

No.

Speaker 1:

So which is the one that you're using the natural gas to electricity?

Speaker 2:

Mirvish Village in Toronto.

Speaker 1:

Toronto, okay, so what are the components, wise, and the systems used for that? So natural gas comes in and power and then fires. What steam pumps? No, okay, so how's it turning into electricity?

Speaker 2:

Natural gas comes in, we burn that. We burn the gas, drive an engine. An engine, Big giant engine, just like a car engine a bit fancier in the building. That engine will then turn a turbine or generator, which will then create power. Gotcha okay, and that process offsets, or produces a bunch of heat. That heat could go into the air but instead we capture that heat reuse it, and then that's how we try to have a bit of circular economy right, crazy.

Speaker 1:

There's a lot of heat that that generates that's a good amount of heat, crazy yeah, that's cool. Wow, look at you guys go huh, it's fun stuff. Come a long way in five years it has.

Speaker 2:

I mean, we built that, I think, when, when I was on your podcast five years ago, we had just finished signing our definitive agreements for that project. Yeah, and now it's built, it's operating.

Speaker 1:

But is that? There's still traffic cones down underneath there? What's going on down there?

Speaker 2:

I think it's on lease up right now. It took a bit of a pause. I mean, covid was pretty rough on a lot of developments, especially in Toronto, which was, I think, the most shut down city in North America. So there's some pretty challenging times over the last few years, which challenging times over the last few years which I think slowed down the development.

Speaker 2:

If you go through it today, it is now, I believe the first building is starting to get leased up and I understand over the next year or so the full lease up is expected to be complete.

Speaker 1:

Right, so it was basically a commercial space you guys were filling in that area for to lease out the space. Yep, okay. Yep, exactly, we have a Send dollars back into the project, kind of. Thing.

Speaker 2:

Exactly. We're a tenant like anybody else. We pay rent and the only difference is that the other tenants there sell retail or sell service. We have big energy assets in there.

Speaker 1:

Just a question on the ESG stuff. Do you see that continuing over the next little while, or is this new American election going to change a bunch of stuff?

Speaker 2:

Well, I think with or without the election, it was changing already and I think that the ESG models have been rather questionable. But it's not the S in the ESG, it's some of the other stuff. So the sustainability part of ESG, the decarbonization part, I do not expect that to change. A colleague of mine, for example, was in Europe for vacation and he was chatting with some of his investment banking buddies over there and he said that nobody will invest in a new building unless it's either zero carbon or has a pathway to get there. Investors don't want to touch it. So I don't think that the carbon element of ESG is going to be changing with Trump. That's right. Sorry E part. That's right. Sorry E part. That's right.

Speaker 1:

The social governance is going to be there, yeah.

Speaker 2:

I always get the letters confused, but the environmental part, I believe, will remain. It's the other stuff that I think there's a bunch of questions around Because it's tied up with some other acronyms. Yes, yeah, and I don't know why we have to conflate some of those different things. I think they have vastly different impacts.

Speaker 1:

And we somehow, as a society, tend to put them together and I don't know if that's quite right. Yeah well, I mean we won't get into the details, but just from a macro point of view. A lot of those are a reaction to culture, whereas the environmental side of things isn't really. I mean, it's either you can ski on black or you can't in the summer. It's pretty absolute 100%.

Speaker 2:

I have no interest in participating in these cultural wars that we see across Canada and the US. I have a big interest in decarbonizing our energy supply. Yeah, that's cool.

Speaker 1:

All right. Well, that's pretty awesome. Anything to add before we finish this push-mouse?

Speaker 2:

Well, maybe what I'll add. I mentioned the project that we're doing in Vancouver, downtown CORE. I just wanted to paint a picture of the future as well.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, let's do it. Yeah, that sounds awesome, thank you.

Speaker 2:

So we have our seam utility downtown Vancouver. It's been built up over 55 years. We're now modernizing and decarbonizing part of the plant. What we've come to realize is what we're building today, which is transmission lines, substation giant electric boilers. We'll get to about 40% reduction in carbon on an annual basis. That we expect will carry us to 2030 to meet our customers' needs, which some have varying demands. But that probably won't be enough in the long term and we have to find a way to actually get to full decarbonization, if that's by 2050 or by 2040, I don't know 2050 if you look at the federal policy. So I think in the future what we're going to find out is that we're going to have to start replacing a bunch of our steam piping with hot water piping. We're going to be putting in more electrical capacity, putting in heat pumps and if you think of the energy story, over time it'll go from.

Speaker 2:

In the 50s, downtown Vancouver was heated by fuel oil and coal. We transitioned that to natural gas. Today we're transitioning that to electricity. Just straight up, electricity. Every kilowatt of electricity is a kilowatt of heat. But I believe in the next 20 years we'll transition it to more efficient heat pump-based electricity where for every kilowatt of electricity. We can then output three, four kilowatts of heat and use that in a far more efficient manner. That said, that means we've got to replace 15 kilometers of piping in downtown Vancouver. We've got to add a bunch more generation, so our work is cut out for us, but I think that Vancouver will be one of the first cities to achieve a zero carbon outcome.

Speaker 1:

Praise that. That sounds awesome. I look forward to all the potholes in the streets.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, sorry about that.

Speaker 1:

If only they could pave it in the evening. If only they could pave it in the evening, that would be great. It's crazy Like downtown is a disaster. Like have you seen north of Georgia Street All of?

Speaker 2:

those streets are just. Yes, I have.

Speaker 1:

All the way down to Gastown. Any of those streets going up are all just look like Mr Patches.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, we're not going to be helpful there. I apologize, but it's for a good cause.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, well, hopefully you guys are like the end stuff that needs to be done and they'll be able to pave over you guys and give you guys access. You guys go through, like where are the access points for most of these things? Are they all in the infrastructure of the buildings themselves, or are they in some of the underneath the streets, or are they?

Speaker 2:

in some of the underneath the streets, both, so through the streets there will be a bunch of manholes that are actually our manholes.

Speaker 1:

They're yours, they're ours, so you guys can go down there and check stuff out.

Speaker 2:

Exactly right.

Speaker 1:

Have you been down those things?

Speaker 2:

I have not. Okay, they don't let me. No, if I try to touch a valve or engineers look at me and kick me out of the From a distance.

Speaker 1:

I've seen pictures. What's it like down? There Cylindrical Dark A bunch of trolls down there. No, no Black eyes.

Speaker 2:

No, no, look, that's what I thought too, but that's not the case. And then every customer building, we'll have a heat exchanger, we'll have our metering equipment, so we have access, and a utility room, exactly, we'll have. That's really our access points, that's pretty cool.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, nice, all right. Well, it's a pleasure seeing you again. Thank you very much for coming in. Thank you, and this was great.

Speaker 2:

I look forward to it. I'll be back in five years.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, sounds great Okay.

Speaker 2:

Cheers Awesome, thank you.

Speaker 1:

Well, that does it for another episode of the Site Visit. Thank you for listening. Be sure to stay connected with us by following our social accounts on instagram and youtube. You can also sign up for our monthly newsletter at sitemaxsystemscom slash the site visit, where you'll get industry insights, pro tips and everything you need to know about the site visit podcast and sitemax, the job site and construction management tool of choice for thousands of contractors in North America and beyond. Sitemax is also the engine that powers this podcast. All right, let's get back to building.