 Okay, good morning everyone. We'll go ahead and get started. Sure other people will be trickling in. We have a lot, a lot of material to cover. So try to give the panelists as much time as possible. To talk about these really remarkable papers. So I'm Lee Raymond. I'm a professor of political science at Purdue University. Although at the moment I'm actually out on the West Coast on my sabbatical. So it's earlier in the morning out here, but really looking forward to moderating. Today's panel on the topic of energy security and electric policy. Electricity policy. Which is a part as I think, as most of you know, of the great 2020, 2021 North American colloquium. My climate policy organized. Or I think led by Barry Ray, who's here right and I think Josh also right, such as who also has played a really key role in that. And that colloquium is really a collaborative venture between Michigan's Ford school of public policy. And specifically, I guess it's international policy center. And the University of Toronto and the autonomous national University of Mexico. Created a few years ago, the colloquium has brought together really. Highly talented leading academic analysts and practitioners, right from all three countries to address. Key public policy issues facing those countries and last year's issue was climate change, which is how people like me ended up being a part of the process. So, so these events and the reports that are being generated for climate have also been supported by the, the Meany family foundation as well. Josh and Barry wanted me to mention that. So today we'll focus on three of the reports coming out of this effort. The first is by Monica Gattinger from the University of Ottawa. And the second is by Marcella Lopez-Biblejo from the University of Guadalajara is on Mexico U.S. Cross-border electricity hubs, limitations and opportunities for decarbonization. And then the third speaker will be Josh or Joshua Setschis from the University of Michigan, presenting work that I think is co-authored by, I'm going to get this name wrong. Well, Maka, I think I can see from the European University Institute on the U.S. Canada Clean Electricity Relationship challenges and opportunities for policy design and coordination. And Josh wanted me to mention as well that as a special bonus gift for attending the seminar, everyone here will receive copies of these reports from the University of Michigan, presenting work that I think is co-authored by, everyone here will receive copies of these reports when they're released in their final published version in a couple of weeks. And those will be emailed to you as well. So there's something that you feel like you wanted to hear more about and you didn't get a chance to have a question answered. You'll have a chance to see the four reports, right? And I, having read all of these now several times, multiple times, I recommend them all very highly. So, okay. So Josh and Barry asked me to just mention a few things that really stood out to me from reading these three papers together. Pretty carefully now. I've read, I think I've never read all of them at least twice. They're really remarkably good papers and they're really remarkable. I would say that they, it's remarkable to me that how little this issue gets attention and how important it really is, right? So I think this is a great opportunity to look at this sort of cross-border coordination question, right? Like around, in particular, the issue of electricity and renewables for electricity. And that these three authors have done a remarkable job of digging into some of the pretty technical details of that, making that really accessible. I would say a few things that just really stood out to me as themes across three papers. The first was, I guess, really reinforcing yet again, you know, somebody who's been studying energy and climate policy now for 20 years, how utterly transformed this topic has been by the shale oil revolution in the US, like just absolutely has turned things that we thought we knew 100% in 2000 on their head basically, right? And that, that revolution I think really reverberates through all of these papers as they discuss these cross-border issues. I think they also speak to an important topic that perhaps doesn't always get as much attention as it should. And even maybe in some cases gets a little bit politicized. And I think Monica and I talked about this a little bit, at least by email. And that is really the issue of kind of energy security and reliability as a part of this shift to renewables and the importance of cross-border trade and ensuring that kind of security of supply. And then finally, I was really struck and certainly because of my own interests, at the tensions between sort of what I would describe as local or even maybe national climate and other goals compared to international goals and priorities around climate change. I think in different ways each of the authors and their papers really, really notes that tension as being a serious challenge for perhaps improved coordination of electricity delivery in the two countries. And again, I think that's something when we get into the Q and A, I have a couple of questions that I might want to ask the panelists about that as well. So yeah, so with that, I'll keep it brief and then let's go ahead and let the panelists, I think each give about a five minute sort of summary of their main findings and conclusions and then we'll write, Josh, and then we'll go ahead and start with the Q and A. Yep. Okay. And I'm not sure who's going to go first. Is that going to be Monica, Josh? Yep. So Monica, over to you. Great. Thanks, Lee. And thank you so much to Josh and to Barry, for all the work that has gone into shepherding and spearheading. This project, it's, you know, North America in some respects has sort of fallen off political and policy agendas over the last number of years, or at least the good parts of it have fallen off of political and policy agendas. So it's really wonderful to see it coming back on and to see academic institutes take a leadership position on this. So thank you again to Barry and to Josh. So I'll keep this really brief. I guess that the first thing I just want to say is, you know, why did I write this paper? Lee gave you a bit of a sense of the paper. And what I really wanted to try to do is to draw attention to the importance of energy security on the road to net zero. And by that, I mean, often when, you know, when people hear energy security, they think security boiling gas supplies and, and, you know, yes, that's part of it, but that's not actually, you know, it's a very narrow definition of things. The definition that I take in the paper comes from the International Energy Agency, which is ensuring the uninterrupted availability of energy sources at an affordable price. So it's about, you know, reliability and availability of energy, whether that is oil and gas or power, energy sources, again, that's all sources of energy, all forms of energy, not just some, and it's about affordability. And I think, you know, what, what I have tried to articulate in this paper is the way in which energy security and ensuring that we've got reliable, affordable supply of energy on the road to net zero is going to be absolutely crucial in terms of sustaining political support for emissions reductions and in terms of, you know, realizing the economic potential from an industry and investor perspective of, of emissions reductions. The other thing that I do in this paper, so I kind of start by, here's the definition and then I run through the idea of how might, you know, the journey to net zero by 2050 effect availability and reliability and affordability, utilizing the IEA's net zero by 2050 roadmap for the global energy sector. So kind of run through some of, some of that, and I won't go through that here today, but I would encourage you to have a read of the paper if you're interested. And then I spend in the paper some time going through the energy security defined in the way I've just defined it, falling off the Canada US energy relationship agenda. And it really is striking to me as somebody who's been looking and you know, a student of Canada US energy relations for a couple of decades now it's very striking to me that if you look back to say, you know, the year 2000, essentially over the last 20 plus years, you see energy security increasingly slide off that bilateral energy agenda. And I articulated in the paper why that is the case pointing to two things, one of which that Lee already pointed to, which is the shale revolution, which, you know, completely upended the United States energy oil and gas security of supply situation and concerns over energy security, but also the rise of climate imperatives, which have, you know, really zeroed in attention on rightly on emissions reductions. But, you know, I make the case in the paper that that, you know, in the absence of attention to affordability and reliability of energy going forward, that that actually might be counterproductive to achieving emissions reductions, emissions reductions objectives. So where the paper, you know, kind of ends is looking at well, where are there some opportunities for Canada in the US to collaborate around, around energy security. And, you know, here I use the partnership for roadmap for a new partnership between Canada and the United States as the jumping off point, a document which, you know, again, I was a little disappointed to see did not pay much if any attention to energy security. And I articulate, you know, in the paper ways in which Canada in the US could expand that collaboration agenda to include questions of energy security. So looking at things like collaboration on, on planning and energy forecasting in both countries, coordinating infrastructure planning and builds notably cross-border and Lee, I know you want to get into that in our discussion. There's lots of opportunities for collaboration around innovation and trade. And again, with a view to both emissions reductions and energy security imperatives, as well as regulatory reform. This is an area that I'm particularly alive to and be happy to get into in the discussion session. So I'll, I'll wrap it up there Lee. I think the only, you know, final thing I would say is that the Russian invasion of Ukraine has really brought a renewed focus to energy security, but understood in that security of oil and gas supplies perspective. And I think, you know, to the politics of energy security and the way that concept can be politicized for a variety of different ends. I think we're really seeing that play out live when it comes to where Europe may or may not go in its future for natural gas and oil, reducing imports from Russia, importing from other countries, you know, backing oil and gas out of their energy supply mix. So I'll stop there, Lee, and hopefully that we can get into a little bit of a discussion of that in the Q&A portion. Great. Thanks, Monica. Okay, so, well, I think we'll go ahead and just go in the order of the program is typical. So Marcella, if you're willing to go ahead and give us your summary of your main findings and paper, that'd be great. Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Thanks to Josh, for the invitation. Lee, thank you very much for the comments of today's session. And of course, thank you to the Ford School at the University of Michigan. And of course, the audience connected here this morning. Okay, so my paper is draws attention on the U.S.-Mexico relation in terms of how renewables are treated in the cross-border trade. Because as Monica says, it has been not, people have not paid a lot of attention to electricity trade in the Mexico-U.S. border in contrast with the Canada-U.S. border. So the problem that I identify is that Mexico and U.S. cross-border trade is dependent and all the integration and infrastructure, et cetera, goes to the oil and gas section. The integration is profound in fossil fuels. And in terms of volume, we have a very little electricity exchange. And then of that little volume, we have less volume of renewables exchange. So, but there's a puzzling reality because both sides of the border, states both sides of the border, have their own decarbonization goals, deploy their own renewables. They just don't put it into a trade. They just don't have incentives to do that. So the question is, well, why does it happen? Does this happen, right? Why, how do we address this contradiction between domestic state policy goals looking forward at the decarbonization path versus the reality of the energy mix and the energy trade? So in the paper, I explained this, this puzzle in three, by three factors that I identified. Maybe there are some others, but I just focused on, well, I speak from the Mexican side in general. So Mexico has a historical dependence on fossil fuels coming from Texas or through passing through Texas. Almost 70, 75% of our gas in Mexico is from the United States. So whenever you in Texas have a freeze like last year's in February, we, Mexico shuts down. We don't, you know, we don't have any other source of powering the country. The second factor is that, is how norms put obstacles or limitations to the management of electricity in Mexico and contrast with the United States where states have their own policies towards energy or climate or decarbonization goals. Mexico centralizes energy. So states have little say in terms of that we can develop, you know, energy policies, energy, climate policies. However, when there comes regulations or when there comes, you know, the time for implementation, we depend on central decision making. So we states have little capacity apart from distributed generation or self-consumption states really do not own their own energy resources. So they cannot develop their own or independent energy policies. And the other factor, as I mentioned is besides a small electricity, having a small electricity market, the infrastructure in the cross-border region, you know, transmission lines are very old and no one invests in refurbishing them. No one is investing in creating more or with more capacity in compared with a huge infrastructure of oil and gas that we have all cross-border especially in the border with Texas. So at the end of the day, this paper shows that states both sides of the border develop their own energy policies and climate policies in a separated way. Policies for their own consumption, for energy consumption, including renewables, Texas is one example with huge renewable deployment for their own consumption. And the other alternative scenario is that they develop their energy policies depending on cross-border trade profits. Texas will not stop selling oil and gas to Mexico because it's very profitable. So while Texas is trying to make this decarbonization come real, all the oil and gas is being sold to Mexico. And we are very happy here to receive all those resources. And to wrap up, you know, in the paper because I've been talking a lot, I show three cases in three cross-border energy hubs, the California by California one, the El Paso Electric with some northern states in Mexico, and the Texas Mexico energy hubs. And the finding says that only the California by California includes renewable electricity trade, although in an asymmetrical way, but the others, you know, the El Paso Electric and Texas, the ERCOT, they just profit from and depend on the demand coming from Mexico in terms of electricity trade regarding renewables. And I will stop here. So if you have any questions, you know, there's the paper so we can discuss it later. Thank you. Thanks, Marcella. And thanks to both of the speakers for keeping your remarks on a complicated topic soon to be brief. It's not easy. So, Josh, we'll go ahead and have you give your five-minute analysis. Then we'll get into some of the discussion. Thank you so much, Lee. And thank you to Monica and Marcella, whose papers are just excellent. And thank you to Barry, who is a fantastic mentor for me at the Ford School. So my paper, which is co-authored with a research assistant who at the time was a law student at Michigan, has now moved on to a PhD in Europe, was inspired initially by events that some of you may have been following in the state of Maine. And that is that a new transmission line that was constructed by central Maine power, which is the main regulated state of Maine, was to bring carbon free hydroelectricity generated in abundance in Quebec, the Canadian province of Quebec, through the state of Maine to be consumed primarily by electricity customers in Massachusetts. And this generated enormous political controversy and ultimately resulted in a referendum question on last fall's statewide ballot, in which Maine voters by overwhelming margins rejected the project, halting it for moving forward. And the future of that project is currently being litigated in the courts over in Maine. So the question is, why does this matter beyond Maine and Quebec, the source of the proposed electricity transmission and Massachusetts its destination? Well, it matters because it highlights a simple but often forgotten truth that electricity knows no political borders. Electrons flow freely over the U.S. and Canada border and to a lesser extent, but one of the things that I highlighted, the U.S. Mexico border every single day. And it matters because both the United States and Canada, which are the two countries I'll focus on, have committed to deep decarbonization of the electricity sector. And beyond that, in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions across their entire economies, the linchpin of the strategy of both countries is to electrify everything, right? Electrify transportation through electric vehicles, through heat pumps and things like that. So, of course, this is wonderful from, I mean, this is a good strategy. I have no qualms with the strategy, but of course, this is going to increase demand significantly on electricity. And when we increase that demand, it's very important that that demand be met with zero emission or low emission resources. Now, the problem, and this is something that has been alluded to in this talk, in this session, is that if we think about the most efficient way to do this, it becomes clear that we're going to need to build out enormous amounts of new transmission capacity, exactly like what had been proposed in Maine. But we're going to have to be doing that everywhere across the continent, both east to west and north to south. And in particular, it's noteworthy that Canada already produces most of its electricity from zero carbon sources and specifically from hydro. In fact, over two thirds of that country's overall electricity generation comes from hydroelectricity, whereas only 6% of our total generation here in the U.S. comes from this resource. Now, it's important that we encourage both the U.S. and Canada, but especially the U.S., given how far behind it is, to develop new sources of renewable generation as quickly as possible. And wind and solar are very important pieces of this, and they are rapidly being deployed in both countries. But I'd argue it's equally, if not more important, that we ensure that our cross-border transmission capacity is robust enough to ensure that existing renewable generation is distributed in the most efficient way possible, especially when existing generation, like hydro, is what's known as firm and dispatchable, rather than wind and solar, which are intermittent and require storage solutions. Now, those storage solutions are being rapidly developed and scaled, but we have a long way to go if we're really going to power the entire grid with large amounts of wind and solar. At the same time, we have this odd reality in both countries that many of the policies governing the electricity sector have been set forward at the subnational level. And here I'm talking about the provinces in Canada and the states in the U.S. Now, the bulk of my research these days is looking at the political forces that are shaping variation in the design of U.S. state-level renewable portfolio policies, which are, have been the primary driver in the U.S. of new renewable energy. And these policies are developed by state-level politicians. Some of them policy entrepreneurs, as Barry Rape has written about, that have done tremendously good work, but ultimately the constituencies that they're serving are their own states. They want local economic development. They want benefits for their own states. Nothing wrong with that. But again, because electricity doesn't care about state borders and it doesn't care even about national borders, what ends up happening is these policies are often at cross-purposes with the goal of establishing new transmission, which again is essential to decarbonizing the continent's electricity sector. So just to wrap up, what Nmaka and I did in this paper was to look closely at the RPS policies of seven Northeastern states. Those would be the six New England states plus New York. And we chose those states because they have the greatest degree of current interconnection with the Canadian grid, but also the greatest potential to expand that interconnection, which is what was attempting to be happening in Maine. And here's where things get really wonky and into the weeds. And I'm happy to elaborate this all in Q&A. But basically there's three elements. RPS policies, everyone knows them in terms of their targets and their timelines, how much renewable energy and by what time. And that, you know, those are great, they make for great bumper stickers and they're very important, those goals. But the policies themselves are extremely complicated and three provisions in particular. One about resource eligibility, which resources count for credit under the Renewable Portfolio Standard. The Renewable Energy Credits, which is the currency through which compliance with renewable portfolio standards is calculated. These renewable energy credits can to varying degrees in different states be unbundled from the electricity, which means that they're traded separately from the underlying electricity, which again, perfectly fine if the goal is to create new generation, but doesn't solve the problem if that generation has no transmission capacity to hook up from, but they don't actually represent energy, but they aren't actually the same as energy and therefore create barriers to transmission. So what we found when we considered oh, and then the third one, the third policy element is geographic restrictions on both generation and deliverability. And what we found when we looked at these three elements in the seven states is that they all were lacking, they all, you know, were in a significant room to incentivize cross-border transmission. New York's is the most encouraging of the seven. And I have various ideas for why that is and I'd be happy to talk about that in the Q&A. Connecticut and Vermont are sort of in the middle, they've got some provisions that encourage this sort of cross-border transmission, but others that discourage. And the rest of the states are severely discouraging this transmission with the exception of two-sits, which is sort of in a category of its own because it's subsequently passed its own separate legislation to try to deal with hydroelectricity, but the actual RPS is fairly discouraging. So I think the main takeaway that I'll conclude with is that one of the keys to realizing the clean energy aspirations and specifically the clean electricity aspirations that both countries have stated at their national level is to expand transmission capacity. And so we're still, until we do that, we're still going to become reliant, we're still going to be reliant on traditional sources of electricity like gas and coal if we don't have the transmission infrastructure to bring new renewables into the grid. And so this is a real opportunity for international continental coordination and collaboration rather than a continuation of the fairly siloed ways in which these policies have developed in one state or another, which I do not want to I am not against these policies, they have done a tremendous amount of good in terms of creating new domestic demand and sources for renewable energy, but the simple reality is that they were not designed with this question of transmission capacity in mind, and that is I believe the most urgent challenge going forward. Thank you. Okay. Thanks Josh. So although I have several questions for the panel, I think I'm really going to limit myself to one for now, and I'm hoping that maybe each of you can talk a little bit about this because I really want to make sure then we have some time for questions from the audience. So I'd say for audience members you can either put your question in the chat or just use the raise your hand function and I'll call on people as I see the hands go up after we get through this initial discussion as well. So I was really struck with all these papers as I am by really almost any discussion of energy and climate policy today about both places where what Gidsted talked about is environmental justice concerns really came up explicitly and where they did not come up by name, but I felt like they were really quite potentially relevant to the discussion. So I'd really invite each of the panelists to just talk a little bit about are there ways in which I'll just give a couple of examples. So anytime you talk about international energy trade, for example, carbon offsets, things like that, you instantly engage a very robust to say the least debate about the ethics of exporting emissions or co-pollutants abroad or like I think Marcelo's paper was fascinating in the context of California basically taking all the renewable energy from Mexico in the one hub that's actually working and that raises some important and confusing questions about how much is that really a benefit from Mexico? Is this just another form of sort of version of carbon colonialism? And even between, I think, even with the Canadian-U.S. relationships when you talk about building new infrastructure, energy infrastructure you almost automatically it's not just, it's easy to dismiss the concerns as NIMBYism but I think it's both Monica and Josh talked about but some of these concerns are quite serious about Indigenous land and other issues and a lack of participation in that process are really challenging what forms of infrastructure are appropriate where. So I just really invite each of the panelists to talk a little bit about this because it seems to me that the community is just so tied up in these environmental justice issues that really, we all have to grapple with them anytime we want to talk about any sort of major recommendations and we should need to talk about them in that way. So again, I just be really eager to hear the panelists talk a little bit about how they see that connecting to their the proposals that they're discussing in their papers. Do you want to take that first? Sure. We can start Lee and I'm sure Josh and Marcella both have thoughts as well. I think this is really important and a lot of the work that I've done in the energy and climate space has been about how do we move from the what to the how on emissions reductions and looking at some of the areas where we haven't seen necessarily a lot of attention whether it's intergovernmental relations regulatory frameworks energy security as we're talking about today, but also public opinion and community support for projects. So if we just stick for a moment with infrastructure, we've done tons of work around what informs and shapes communities level of satisfaction with energy project decision making processes and while pipelines of course come to mind for people as the challenging sorts of infrastructure to site as Josh has made clear with his paper it's just about any kind of large major energy infrastructure project regardless of what its benefits or impacts will be on the climate. So one of the things that's come forward very clearly in our work is the that at the local level local environmental impacts will often trump for lack of a better word global climate benefits and I think that's really important for us to be aware of and in the Canadian context in terms of Indigenous rights and title increasingly the starting point for Indigenous communities is not engagement. It's partnership and equity stakes in projects and so all of this I think you know back to the climate piece all of this actually takes time if you want to do it and do it well and so I think we're going to see some real you know tensions there between reducing emissions and ensuring that we are attending to those environmental justice considerations that you know that we all I think are very alive to. The other just super quick example I would give as well and I was just on a panel this morning actually around greening Ontario's electricity grid which already is like 92% non-emitting or something so it's quite an interesting discussion but the question there is you know who pays what when and how for that process and if it's landing on the shoulders of folks who are the least you know prepared to pay for it particularly as folks defect from the grid we've got some real problems from an environmental justice perspective so I see lots of intersections here Lee and you can always you know for purposes of my paper you can always make the link back through to energy security reliability affordability of energy supplies. Thanks yeah so Marcella or Josh anything you want to add in your Marcella why don't you go first if you yes thank you well you know in the case of the Mexico-U.S. border two of the of the energy hubs we have which is the El Paso electric and the air cut that one in Texas you know the things run like very like business as usual we export crude oil and you and we import oils and gasoline and diesel and gas so there's no you know in terms of justice you know it's like we do that because the price that you offer is very very low in comparison with the gas prices that we have in Mexico so and that makes you know affordable access that gives affordable access to to Mexico Mexicans you know to to get electricity and power however the interesting case Lee is the Baja California California hub because as I mentioned energy in Mexico is centralized however Baja is so far away from from the center that is not connected to the Mexican grid it is connected to the California one so for Baja you know in terms of justice and ethics and and yes of course having all the externalities of green of green in California it doesn't matter really it's it's more of a of a survival issue that to get the supply necessary and if it has to be with gas because it's cheap right or if it has to be with oils and diesel coming from the United States from California and other partners well it let's let's do so right because it's it's a matter of survival empowering all Machiladora manufacturing in the north and we in Baja California we have electricity generated by renewables we have geothermal and we have wind and solar especially wind and geothermal however the companies and this may be a topic for discussion later the companies with the technology to do to generate that kind of electricity are from the United States so in if we are very critical of the situation we would say that Baja it's it's manufacturing or Machila right of green electricity for California to meet climate goals however if we are a little bit more in the center of the discussion we need to acknowledge that Baja needs California to power to live in a normal daily life to turn on the lights every morning it is not connected to the Mexican grid so it has to be connected somewhere to get the sources from somewhere and affordable prices and gas is cheaper in that area so yes we can talk about inequalities that's why in the paper I stress the asymmetrical relationship however the it is a mutual dependency California needs renewables to meet its climate goals and Baja needs whatever energy source they can acquire thanks Marcella so Josh maybe really quickly because we are I already have a question so basically a big part of the opposition in Maine was indigenous communities but that was not the only part of the opposition in fact a lot of gas incumbent gas utilities had nothing to do with environmental justice but just that they didn't want to compete with the low price of hydroelectricity that being said environmental justice concerns are paramount when it comes to anything that involves other people's land and that includes siting of renewable generation and of course siting of these transmission projects there is a growing body of researchers focusing on the former the siting of generation and I point to a colleague Sarah Mills who has done great work on this and Heather Millar as well who will be involved in a later webinar but when it comes to transmission because they cross state and national borders it's really a regulatory governance issue and we need is procedural just what's known as procedural justice in the planning of new transmission so we have to build the transmission we can't just say that because you know there's a lot of new constituencies that means that we can't ever build new transmission what we have to do though is make sure that their voice is equally if not more present at the table as the various other constituencies and that they're compensated fairly for any land that is needed so. Thanks Josh and I'll just without expecting a response and I think it would be interesting for somebody to do an assessment shifting a lot of this production across the border of renewables right because clearly you're leaving higher emissions of not just carbon and that's a big part of the debate over offsets and I feel like that could be very relevant here it sounds to me like it's already coming up on the Mexican border so the citing is a big question but I feel like that would also be an interesting thing to think about as we think about these sort of international trade of electricity concerns so I have a question in the chat from Martin Moster and then I see Deborah has a question so maybe we'll just go in that order to start I can read Martin's question so could you comment on electricity wastage because power is locked in for example Ontario's nuclear power capacity being available at negative prices St. Catherine's unable to sell hydro power off the well in canal and the flip side when electric cars become common will there be a need when that excess power is available and then the right speaker asked how much greenhouse gas reduction is available just by reducing electricity waste basically and how can we accomplish that so it sounds like that might be more of Monica's right that's an awesome question Martin and I completely agree with the kind of the built-in premise there I think job one for some of these issues has to be about optimizing our existing systems and there's no question that as you've given a few examples here that there's a lot that can be done there how does one go about incentivizing that I think there you know and again I'd have to look a little bit more closely at the specific situation in Ontario but my spidey sense tells me that you would need to ensure that we've got regulatory frameworks that are not only focusing on that traditional regulatory compact of cost of service regulation but that are also increasingly incorporating considerations of emissions reductions into their decision-making because as it stands there are limited capacities for utilities whether it's on the gas side or on the electricity side to have their emissions reductions efforts either recognized compensated or taken into consideration in decision-making and I think that's something that we've got a big gap there in terms of where policy ambitions are and then where our regulatory systems are at the second part of your question though I think it's also about optimizing our systems or aligning our systems for what's happening going what's likely to happen going forward so in Ontario for example the current is that electrification will lead to something like a doubling or maybe even a tripling of Ontario's electricity generating capacity how much of that could potentially be addressed through reducing the waste as you've noted here how much of that could also be about you know as we have emerging systems that have distributed components to them like electric vehicles ensuring that we're optimizing that emerging system because that itself can also reduce as I think you're suggesting in your question can actually reduce the amount of new build that we actually require and whether it's investment dollars for that are the challenges of getting things built you know at the community level let me just tack on one very small thing because Monica really covered that very well just the latter part so I'm not entirely familiar with what Martin is referring to as electricity wastage but in terms of the question about how much GHG reduction is available the answer is not nearly enough I mean that yes Monica is 100% right we need to focus on making the system more efficient but first of all nuclear is very low emitting when it comes to GHGs there's other problems with nuclear environmentally but basically we have to both build new capacity and make sure the existing capacity we have from hydro and from nuclear which are both relatively low emitting is distributed in the most efficient way possible so that's not instead of but in addition to efficiency and optimization okay thank you so I think Deborah right then in I think you had a question right so I'll go ahead and let you yeah hello yeah thanks so much to the panelists for their great papers so I think like a lot of people in this zoom room I have been so disillusioned by the lack of interest in cooperation across borders by the current Biden administration I had much higher expectations as I'm sure all of us did and Monica I completely agree I find the renewed partnership agreement I mean it's just there's so little in there to hook anything on and in fact what I see in so many fields related to green energy to EVs you know across some of these things where I think Canada and the US could be cooperating and the US and Mexico could be cooperating I find actually a competitive dynamic emerging and this is linked I think in really important ways to the very deep political polarization in the US and the deepening political polarization in Canada but you know it strikes me that maybe I'm wringing my hands about the wrong thing because also lots of folks in this in this zoom room including myself have said the interesting stuff happening in certainly the Canada US relationship happens under the radar in trans governmental interagency stuff you know sort of you know the kind of things that Monica was talking about with regulatory cooperation and ironing out some of that stuff can anyone give me some reason to hope that right now there are some interesting under the surface stuff happening that is furthering the cause of Canada US green energy interactions Josh why don't you jump in first I had a well I was just going to say Deborah that I'm hoping that you're going to give us the hope next week because Deborah is one of the panelists in our series and she's done a fantastic paper on the opportunities for cooperation but so I don't have anything more to say I mean unfortunately I wish there was more optimism in my research these days it seems things like it seems like a vicious cycle of pessimism but that's pretty much all I have to say so Thanks Josh that you know I really want to give you something to you know cling on to there Deborah I feel your pain you know and it's at the sub national level too I don't quite understand like what is going on why are we not and I think you're right that your analysis I haven't looked at it closely enough to have a super considered view but I think you're on the right track where I would see some hope though is at the sort of industry energy climate expert at the sub national level right so this forum would be a nice illustration of that I see a lot of work being done you know across the border in terms of industry and really strong networks for the last 10 years or so I've participated in a thing called the New England Canada business council their annual energy forum and it's bringing together you know I can remember Josh I went out for dinner with the Avon grid people and they were all there's definitely a lot going on at that level and I think it then you know sort of behooves hopefully either changes in the external environment things like rising energy prices for example things like growing climate you know crises that start to focus the mind on these issues and the recognition that there can be you know value to collaborating across the border and then you know the folks like us and others kind of at the ready with suggestions for areas that we should be building on the on that collaboration so I recognize that's not a super you know here are the five places I point to where lots is going on kind of an answer but I think we have to we have to keep you know beating the drum for lack of a better expression like Deborah agrees so yes great okay okay so we have another question in the chat from Sherry McWhorter speaking to Ukraine so can you speak to the volatility of the energy market because of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the subsequent calls to double down on fossil fuel infrastructure that's certainly been happening here in the US those calls like pipelines as a matter of energy security is that what's needed here or given the escalating climate crisis is it more prudent to ramp up investment in renewable energy and transmission given what's happening and why if anybody wants to speak to that and I'll just say we probably will have time for like one more question after this question if you've got something you want to ask I'm assuming that I'm assuming that's me should probably answer answer that question you know from from my perspective the the debates we see emerging around this issue I think you know are framing these as either or issues just as the question has and I think it's actually it has to be and it you know we have a global energy system and domestically as well here in both Canada and the US that is you know 80% fossil fuel dependent turning that ship around is going to take is going to take some time so even if you look at you know Europe's repower the EU plan it you know it sees reducing or sorry eliminating dependence on Russian gas for example by by 2030 you know and a good chunk of that happening in the next year or two and how are they going to go about doing that well on the one hand yes it's ramping up other sources of energy renewables on the other hand it is replacing that supply you know in the short medium long term with gas from other sources and I think you know what pains me a bit about the current moment is that rather than you know perhaps putting up a more constructive debate around these issues what we're seeing instead is is what Deb pointed to a moment ago sort of more polarization around around energy and climate issues so my answer the short answer one word answer is is I think it's going to take both I'm not sure about pipeline specifically but certainly certainly the contribution of countries like Canada and the US and others in the Western Alliance to strengthening energy security globally Marcel would you like to add something to that yes sure yes you know building on Monica's comment I would also add new technologies the race for new technologies in energy you know knowing that China or even the United States and France of course are developing for example micro nuclear plants you know and and some countries right so I guess you know the the choice for Europe now well you know this horrible war may have an opportunity for Europe to decide at the end of the day what kind and who will supply energy because you know the thing is the promise is Europe right who's who will be powering Europe if not Russia so may that maybe you know the time for thinking thinking it twice for Europe to see if if Chinese Chinese supply or the United States or North American supply or others could substitute Russia or to or start thinking of new technologies I know that they are still in development but for example batteries and saving energy I guess it's already there so I guess this is more of an opportunity to rethink the path that Europe and then the path that the world would have in the next 50 years so I agree with Monica that it's not an either or it's a complimentary discussion but not about fossil fuels but about renewables which are maybe not sufficient not enough but new renewables plus other new technologies hydrogen and micronuclear especially okay great question something that is on everybody's minds right now quite a bit alright so it looks to me like maybe this is appropriate right we'll give Barry chance to ask the last question here he wanted to follow up Deb's question by asking something about the new North American trade agreement and I was actually that's great I was trying to ask you a question about carbon border adjustment so ways to create great minds thinking like okay so Barry go ahead and give us the last question here on that well disclosure we did not coordinate this leave but you know the point that you raised Deb and really listening to each of the presentations has made me reflect on what has and has not happened in the North American space in the last couple of years there's the US decision through the North American trade agreement in favor if it were to pass American manufactured vehicles as opposed to those from our North American partners there is as we go into the second or third year of the new continental trade system an international trade agreement but one that largely dodged environment climate and energy issues unlike digital relationships unlike labor but then we've got the bold new era of the United States led by the European Union but every time I hear a Canadian government official talk about this it is kind of evasive but yet there is this reality that Canada is moving toward a hundred and seventy dollar Canadian per ton carbon pricing system the US carbon pricing system is zero and is probably going to remain at zero and Mexican retains a very very natural gas does any of that influence or shape your thinking about the various sectors and arenas either opportunities in a sea BAM or a more aggressive trade nexus world to think about some of the things that you'd like to see explored more in policy or any reaction to those to those particular ideas and again this is directly triggered by what Deb you were talking about and I have a sneaking suspicion we're going to come back to this in a couple of weeks and later sessions. Thanks. I follow just I'll just really quickly comment on that that you know given the sort of problems that I talked about about the domain of electricity policy having up until now been primarily the province of sub national governments which of course have no say very little say compared to the federal government over trade policy I actually do see trade policy as a major potential vehicle for addressing some of these transmission issues because after all electricity is what we're talking about being traded through these transmission lines that said I'm not a lawyer and I don't know some of the technicalities of you know which area which bodies of law would have jurisdiction but I think Barry that the trade the trade climate nexus as you put it is fascinating and you know you and others have highlighted a lot of potential there but I think if to the extent that transmission could be addressed through trade I think that would largely solve some of the problems that I was raising and I would just super quickly add because I know you're going to want to bring this to a close I would just super quickly add you know yes is the short answer but there's a lot of work I think Barry that's going to need to be done we've got all these different sort of systems emerging right so like order adjustment reforming utility regulation reforming electricity market design how you know to what extent will these be or not be coordinated and how much of you know what are some of the obstacles to that that things like federalism for example might pose I see those as huge issues on the not so distant horizon and unfortunately Barry to your point I would agree with you I don't see a lot of kind of clear-headed thinking on any of those issues necessarily coming forward on the Canadian on the Canadian front Marcela yes Quick comment Article 8 of the USMCA is an exception that Mexico put to the energy sector so I'm not that optimistic the federal trade in the three countries would go for a carbon adjustment at least in the USMCA border because well Mexico is exempted electricity and other energy sources and the sector into the USMCA so I'm not that optimistic for the USMCA to change things in terms of energy and electricity okay well I think that brings our panel to a close so again I'll just say thanks to all the panelists for really thoughtful treatment of these complex and pressing issues and I really recommend the papers to everybody who's attending I know this is the first of only several of these panels in this series and so I was going to go ahead and let the panel we'll be meeting so you can make sure to get that onto your calendar so Josh do you want to go ahead and do that great well I just want to thank you Lee again for not only for moderating this but what a lot of folks in the audience may not know is that Lee actually helped review some of these papers in progress and made them better so I really am appreciative of you Lee so yes please join us for our next event which is going to be a week from Tuesday which is April 5th that will be Barry rave's paper on methane policy as well as Trish Fisher focusing specifically on agricultural methane and as we alluded to earlier Debra Van Ninenten and her co-author explore these cooperation clusters that'll all be happening on April 5th at 4pm and to find out about these events if when you registered for this one you checked the box that said keep me informed about the other ones you'll hear directly about that otherwise you can check the Ford school website where that information update where that event is already posted and you can register today if you wanted so thank you so much and take care everybody and thanks for joining us great thank you so much