The future is electric. That s what we re being told, anyway. It pushes on to have us changing our heating systems in our homes, our cars, our vehicles, everything moving towards electric. But is the future truly electric? This week, we look at whether or not we re ready for this so-called electric future.
00:02:18.420Hi, I'm Brian Lilly. This is the Full Comment Podcast.
00:02:21.000And this week, we're going to look at whether or not we're ready for this so-called electric future.
00:02:25.840Canada has landed big investments in the EV battery space.
00:02:30.440Volkswagen, which has never invested in a Canadian plant, is putting up billions to build one here.
00:02:35.860Stellantis, the company that we used to call Chrysler, doing the same in Windsor, Ontario.
00:02:40.460And all the way up the 401 and along the St. Lawrence area, up into Quebec, you've got investment from European, Asian, and other countries in this space.
00:02:53.780Are people ready to switch from an internal combustion engine running on gas or diesel to an electric vehicle?
00:02:59.980Do we have the ability to create and generate, transmit enough electricity to power those vehicles?
00:03:05.580And what about all those heat pumps that we're going to be installing?
00:03:09.160Parker Glant is someone who spent more than 30 years in finance, working at TD Bank, and now spends his time in retirement, researching the energy sector, transmission and distribution of energy, and the future of it.
00:03:22.460He's written in National Post and other publications across the country, and he joins me now.
00:03:30.620So let me ask you, as you heard in that introduction, governments around the world, particularly here in Ontario, put in a big bet on the future being electric.
00:03:43.600So is the future electric, and are we ready for that future?
00:03:49.320Well, if we're ready, we better load up our bank accounts, because it's going to cost us an awful lot of money.
00:03:54.540And I just read a short article today that came out of England, saying that they're going to investigate over there.
00:04:05.320They have what is known as the Climate Change Committee, and they're now launching an investigation because they underestimated the costs in the future.
00:04:18.520And they're saying now it's going to cost trillions more.
00:04:24.500And I don't think that the politicians have done a very good job of actually costing these things out and figuring out what the effects on the economy and our livelihoods are going to be.
00:04:38.680So my view is that we're in for either a tough time, or we're going to have to do, or a politician, you're going to have to do a lot of backpedaling.
00:04:52.500In terms of electric vehicles, that is part of the big push right now.
00:04:59.700And I don't want to get into, do EVs work, do they not work?
00:05:04.660My view is they work in certain settings, certain situations, but not in all.
00:05:10.080But for now, let's talk about if we did go EV, and the Trudeau government says it's sticking to its 2035 deadline of having all vehicles electric.
00:05:31.880It doesn't have charging infrastructure in the parking garage.
00:05:35.180It's a condo building where there isn't even separate meters for each individual unit.
00:05:42.460The entire building would have to be rewired.
00:05:44.880And this is in an urban setting where EVs make much more sense than they do in a rural setting.
00:05:50.900So if that's the sort of challenge that faces individual buildings, that faces individual communities, do we have enough power?
00:05:59.940Are we ready, grid-wise, whether it's in Ontario or British Columbia or Quebec or elsewhere, Alberta, for this push by the federal government to say,
00:06:10.460you're all going to be charging your cars instead of going to the gas station?
00:06:17.020I think it's going to be, as I just pointed out, a huge cost to refit all those buildings that haven't got charging units or have to be upgraded to connect with higher power from the grid.
00:06:30.580And on top of that, all of the grid has to be increased as well as all this demand is expected to drive up both our generation and our use of electricity for all the functions that we perform in life
00:06:48.760that are now supported by fossil fuels and natural gas to heat our homes instead of heat pumps, things of that nature.
00:07:00.320And I don't think the clarity wasn't very good in most of the politicians' brains at this point in time, not just in Canada, but around the world.
00:07:12.820And when we get to talking about EVs, I think the bloom was off the rose.
00:07:17.920I just read an article about California, and for the first time in a decade, sales of EVs in California fell.
00:07:28.180And in Canada, it's not looking much better.
00:07:32.560The only provinces that are selling a reasonable number of EVs are the provinces that had, you know, taxpayer dollars that reduces the costs.
00:07:45.320And, you know, on top of that, we've got to spend, you know, billions, if you look at the world, probably trillions of dollars to put all these chargers in.
00:07:56.860And these chargers, again, I've got to go back to California.
00:08:01.060I remember an article I read about one of the chargers that Tesla had installed, and it was actually using diesel engine to generate diesel fuel, I should say, power to charge the EVs.
00:08:17.860There's a lot of this going on around that we don't know about, and the media doesn't report on it.
00:08:23.300Well, look, I can tell you that if California is not ready, none of us will be, because I spent some time down in California, and there are more electric vehicles there than I see anywhere else in North America.
00:08:40.540More than you would see across Canada, more than you'd see in upstate New York, in Florida.
00:08:47.740I'm just talking, or Chicago, just thinking about the places I've been recently.
00:08:54.660It's all kinds of EVs that you see in California.
00:08:57.920And if their grid isn't going to be ready, I can only imagine what it's going to be like for the rest of us.
00:09:04.900The idea that we can build, though, build capacity, when we've got a government like the Trudeau government, we've got an environment minister like Stephen Guibault, Mr. No More Roads for You.
00:09:18.820You know, to get to where they want us to be would require building capacity, and they're fighting the Saskatchewan government over a wind and solar program that has a natural gas generator backup.
00:09:39.140That's required for those things, but they don't want them to have it.
00:09:42.000They will fight basically any major infrastructure project.
00:09:47.800You think of the amount of electricity we'll need to generate.
00:09:51.060You can't just do this with, you know, small generation facilities or even SMRs, the small modular nuclear reactors.
00:09:59.940There's going to have to be something big.
00:10:03.060You know, Quebec has this massive James Bay electrical generation facility that could not be built today
00:10:10.760because it flooded out a good chunk of the province.
00:10:14.400It would be considered an environmental abomination today to build like that.
00:10:19.700But that's the type of scale that we're going to need, isn't it?
00:10:24.980But if Mr. Guilbera doesn't let us build any roads to James Bay, we're going to be in trouble.
00:10:31.880So, same thing with the, you know, the commodities that are required to make the electric vehicles and batteries that they use.
00:10:42.480I mean, we have those minerals in Canada, but we don't have the roads to them.
00:10:46.600I mean, I keep thinking of the Ring of Fire.
00:10:48.820You probably, a lot of Ontarians would know about the Ring of Fire.
00:10:52.820It's supposed to be loaded with all kinds of valuable minerals.
00:10:55.760But we can't build a road there to it anymore if Mr. Guilbera gets his, you know, his wishes.
00:11:04.320And I was reading another article from quite some time ago, and I think the cost of building that road to the Ring of Fire was north of a billion and a half dollars.
00:11:16.700So, you know, where are they going to find all these dollars to pay for these infrastructure projects is beyond belief.
00:11:25.300I just, you know, you can't just reach into your pocket and say, oh, we've got lots of taxpayers that we can ding, or we're running a big surplus in our annual budgets.
00:11:36.160They're not running any surpluses, any of the governments, except perhaps for Alberta.
00:11:41.020And, you know, they benefit from the oil and gas sector.
00:11:45.120So, I don't know where they think they're going to get all this money.
00:11:49.660And besides that, they've got all the, you know, all the regulations to go through.
00:11:56.200They've got to, you know, make sure that the First Nations involved are going to be on their side.
00:12:03.320Again, and, you know, so, you know, the hopes that we're going to get there by 2035 is, you know, unbelievable.
00:12:13.280It's not going to happen, I don't think.
00:12:16.020I mean, the other thing that's happened.
00:12:17.700So, I was just going to say, for people that don't know about the Reign of Fire, it's a major mineral deposit in northern Ontario in an area with no roads, no infrastructure.
00:12:29.520And the Ford government has been working closely with, I've been hearing about it for 20 years or more.
00:12:35.840I remember hearing about it from, actually, it's more than 20 years ago now, because I remember hearing Ernie Eves when he was premier, and he left office in 2003.
00:12:43.420Ernie Eves, Dalton McGinty, Kathleen Wynne, now Doug Ford.
00:12:48.600Ford has moved it along a bit in terms of deals with some of the local First Nations, but you've also got some that are opposing it.
00:12:58.200The ones closest to it say, yeah, this is great, this will be economic development, but you've got some that are going to oppose it, and that will slow things down.
00:13:07.200And so, that chromite, that nickel, that copper, zinc, platinum, all these metals, it's going to take a lot of effort, money, and time to get that out of the ground.
00:13:17.260And meanwhile, you've got developments where people are going around and looking, because of this electric vehicle battery rush, you've got people looking in new places for minerals.
00:13:28.200And down in California, back to there, the Salton Sea is considered one of the biggest lithium deposits, and it's green, and it's easier to get to than the Ring of Fire.
00:13:39.780They've already got roads around the Salton Sea.
00:13:42.040So, there's going to be this ongoing competition, and also competition to get the minerals, and it, you know, may not be able to get enough materials to build the batteries that Trudeau's calling for by 2035.
00:14:00.540I mean, the top 10 battery manufacturers now in the world, out of the top 10, nine of them are from China, believe it or not.
00:14:11.500And the biggest one is this CATL, C-A-T-L, that's the stock trading name, and I'm not going to get into the actual name of the company.
00:14:22.820But they have a 40% market share of all EV batteries around the world that are produced by, you know, whether it's Tesla or whether it's, you know, Stellanus, it doesn't matter.
00:14:36.380So, they have basically got, you know, full control.
00:14:40.460And they've got, you know, lithium mines and other access to all the other minerals needed around the world.
00:14:52.040And a lot of them are, you know, coming out of China.
00:14:54.660I mean, the funny thing about that, EVs, is the fact that probably 90% or maybe even higher, all electric batteries for vehicles are made in China, and made for, also for the battery energy storage systems.
00:15:11.660So, if they're all made in China, how clean are those batteries when they arrive?
00:15:19.680I mean, China's got over 1,150 coal mines, and they keep opening up more and more.
00:15:26.780So, I'm sure those coal mines are emitting all kinds of greenhouse gases over there in China.
00:15:33.120But when the batteries land in, you know, Vancouver or, you know, one of the ports here, all of a sudden, they're going to be clean, you know, non-emitting or anything else.