The holiday season is here and 2024 is coming to a close. It’s a good time to reflect, so we’re looking back at five of the top episodes of thinkenergy in 2024. Join your host Trevor Freeman, as he unwraps the year’s most important topics surrounding the future of energy in Canada. Listen in for how experts are guiding change with insightful data and how they’re communicating facts about the climate crisis. Plus, learn about new energy policies and ongoing updates to the electricity grid.

Related links

• Episode 134 (What the data tells us): https://thinkenergypodcast.com/episodes/what-the-data-tells-us/
• Episode 122 (Climate communication): https://thinkenergypodcast.com/episodes/summer-rewind-climate-communication-motivating-change-with-re-climate/
• Episode 138 (Energy policies deep dive, part 1): https://thinkenergypodcast.com/episodes/energy-policy-deep-dive-with-nicholas-rivers-part-1/
• Episode 136 (Modernizing the electricity grid): https://thinkenergypodcast.com/episodes/summer-rewind-modernizing-the-electricity-grid-with-the-advanced-distribution-management-system/
• Episode 135 (Modernizing Ontario’s energy future): https://thinkenergypodcast.com/episodes/vision-quest-modernizing-ontarios-energy-future-with-the-eda/
• Trevor Freeman on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/trevor-freeman-p-eng-cem-leed-ap-8b612114/
• Hydro Ottawa: https://hydroottawa.com/en 

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Transcript:

Trevor Freeman  00:07

Welcome to think energy, a podcast that dives into the fast, changing world of energy through conversations with industry leaders, innovators and people on the front lines of the energy transition. Join me, Trevor Freeman, as I explore the traditional, unconventional and up and coming facets of the energy industry. If you have any thoughts, feedback or ideas for topics we should cover, please reach out to us at thinkenergy@hydrottawa.com 

Hey, everyone, welcome back. Depending on where you live, you may notice that it's getting a little chilly outside. There is actually a couple snowflakes in the air or even on the ground, depending, again, on where you live. Up here in Ottawa, where I am, it's definitely starting to feel like we're getting close to winter, maybe not quite there yet, but like we're getting close to winter, which does seem to be happening later and later every year, because we're near the end of the year, we thought it would be a good idea to kind of look back at Think Energy over the last 12 months, and this has been an interesting year, both for Think Energy as well as for the industry we work in for Think Energy. It's been an interesting year because we transitioned hosts, and that brings me into the picture. So, I took over the hosting chair earlier this year, and I've really had a great time having conversations with folks and getting to dive into topics that either I know a little about, but not the full picture, or sometimes don't even know that much about. So, it's really been fun to do that, and it was fun to look back over the year at the different episodes that I've recorded and get a sense for where we've come with the show. The industry we work in has also been full of changes, and I think that is just the new reality. Every year, at the end of the year, I could probably say, wow, that was a really impactful year., things changed a lot. Hopefully all that change is in the right direction towards this energy transition, towards cleaning our energy and getting off fossil fuels. But like anything, change will be a bit up and down. Today, we're going to look back at the year and highlight some of the moments from our top episodes. These are the episodes that resonated with you, the listener the most, the ones that kind of got the most listens and the most reaction from and it's fun to pull out some of the impactful moments for us from that, from those episodes. So, in the holiday tradition, we're gonna go back and pull out some holiday treats from our from our favorite episodes, if you will. We're going to start by going all the way back to April, when I had the pleasure to chat with David Coletto, the founder and CEO of abacus data. So, David gave us a snapshot of what Canadians are really thinking about when it comes to the future of energy and our planet. This conversation is the perfect starting point for this episode, because it really lays the groundwork for understanding what Canadians think and feel about the energy landscape and how we will move forward. So, what did David's research reveal about how Canadians prioritize climate change amongst all the other things that are vying for their intention? Here's what he had to say when I asked him about evolving attitudes towards this pressing issue.

David Coletto  03:24

Coming out of the pandemic, though, and I think the defining mindset up today, which is really important to understand, to then understand why people will be resistant to certain public policy choices on climate, or may not be ready to fully embrace a transition, is that most Canadians right now, and I say most, I mean, like 80 to 90% of them, I believe, have a mindset that's very much tied to scarcity. And that is that is a real shift. And what that means is that a lot of the things that people have come to expect they can get in their lives are either more expensive, harder to find or get or they fear losing what they already have, and those are often tied to issues like housing, the general cost of living, and healthcare. And so that mindset then causes us to view public policy decisions, broader economic forces and our day to day lives to a very different lens than one where I describe as there's plenty of everything, right, and a plenty mindset means I can take risks. I can perhaps pay a little bit more, even if the perception is that I pay more, even if it's not true, in order to achieve other kinds of goals. But when I'm the perception of struggling every day just to get the kind of life I want, or I'm the one in three Canadians who feel like they've completely fallen behind, that is going to make it much harder for me to be persuaded to do things that feel like a big change, or feel like they're going to disrupt my life more than it already is. Now, if we expand that and then we say, okay, so how do we overlay that? Add on to views around the broader issues around climate change, energy transition, I think what's clear in the long-term trends is the vast majority, 90 plus percent of Canadians believe climate change is real and is caused by human behavior. Overwhelming majorities believe that we that's actually a crisis that we have to do something about. And in the shorter term, the last, I would say, 12 to 18 months, as a result of you and me, Trevor, I don't know about you, I grew up in, you know, in Ontario. I never once in my entire life stepped out on a June morning and saw smokey s