Green Energy Futures

In a recent episode we talked to Jeremy Kureluk of Rental Bus Lines about how much they like their electric buses and how they hoped one day to connect them to a virtual power plant to feed electricity to the grid. Turns out this is already happening in Canada. Rob Safrata owns a tour bus company and he too wants to go electric. So he started FUSE Power Management, based in Vancouver, to set up th...

The wheels on this electric bus have been going around and around since 2017. We talk to Jeremy Kureluk of Rental Bus Lines based in Stony Plain, Alberta about owning and operating an electric school bus in the cold Canadian north. Turns out they love their electric buses and want more. We dive into all the questions you might have including range, winter performance, maintenance, and more. GreenE...

The ballots have been counted and the winners have been announced of the Energy Innovation Challenge hosted by Decentralised Energy Canada and the City of Medicine Hat. The winners were announced at the Decentralised Energy Canada Forum in Whistlers, British Columbia. (https://www.deforum.ca/) The winners solutions will be piloted on the Medicine Hat Grid to help integrate decentralized energy res...

It's a ticking time bomb - how do we integrate millions of solar, wind and battery projects along with 250 million EVs by 2030 into our outdated 20th Century Grid? Old school utilities often think of building more power plants, distribution, and transmission, but that would cost too much and could never happen fast enough. At least part of the answer lies in software, AI and smart grid technologie...

The City of Medicine Hat has partnered with Decentralised Energy Canada to host the Energy Innovation Challenge, a tool they are using to navigate energy transition and transform new energy resources such as solar, EVs, batteries and managed loads into assets instead of liabilities. GreenEnergyFutures.ca CKUA.com Podcast Medicine Hat & The Energy Innovation Challenge: Navigating Energy Transition...

The long-held dream of using geothermal energy to satisfy our needs and save the earth is ready for a big breakthrough. Today we take a deep dive into Green Energy Futures complete guide to geothermal with hosts Sarah and Michael, our AI hosts from Notebook LM. Geothermal and its cousin Air Source Heat Pumps are ready to provide heat and power to our homes at every scale from single family homes t...

The Energy Innovation Fair is back again this year on Oct. 18-19th. We talk to organizer Rene Michalak of ReThink Red Deer about the speakers, panels, displays and demos that will be featured this year. The theme is economic diversification in Central Alberta and there are speakers on geothermal, solar, carbon storage, agrivoltaics and much more. GreenEnergyFutures.ca CKUA.com Podcast Learn more a...

Our electricity grids were designed to accommodate a few giant power plants. But what happens when millions of solar, wind, EVs, heat pumps and other Decentralized Energy Solutions come online? The Energy Innovation Challenge was created to find new and creative solutions to not only integrate these new energy resources but to turn them into assets in a more robust, clean energy grid of the future...

Virtual power plants are simply networks of small energy producers (solar, wind, backup generators etc.) and energy storage devices that can provide power to the grid when needed. It's the digitization of the grid. It's very efficient, costing 40% less than speaker power plants and it's absolutely essential to start managing the millions of distributed energy systems (solar, batteries, EVs) coming...

Farmer Shawn Morton just said "no" the first time he was approached by solar developers. But Morton found an ally in Claude Mindorff a farmer who was working for the solar company. So he cut a deal to lease 300 acres to a solar project and to keep grazing and farming that land in the lease. It's called Agrivoltaics, or the integration of solar with farming or grazing and Shawn says it just might b...

Solar plus farming, called Agrivoltaics is helping farmers generate new sources of income, keep the family farm viable and keep farming in the solar farm. We meet up with farmer, former oil and gas guy and current renewable energy developer Claude Mindorf at the Joffre Solar Farm in Alberta to talk about agrivoltaics. It turns out Canada could produce all of its electricity from renewable energy t...

Alberta phased out its coal-fired electricity in record time representing the largest single action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in Canada. The trouble is a lot of the coal was replaced by natural gas which produces 60% of the emissions of coal. Can the fossil fuel-infatuated province also capitalize on its amazing renewable energy resources to build the net-zero grid of the future? We talk...

Alberta's last coal-fired power plant stopped burning coal on June 16, 2024 at 10:57 pm. The coal phase-out was originally proposed for 2061, but in 2015 a new target was set for 2030. On June 16 the last lump of coal was burned to produce electricity six years ahead of schedule. The phase-out represents the largest reduction in greenhouse gas emissions of any initiative. We talk to Scott MacDouga...

This is huge! EAVOR believes they've cracked the geothermal nut. Using closed-loop technology they have pioneered a new kind of Geothermal that can be built almost anywhere without uncertainty. We look at EAVOR's pilot project in Alberta and their full-scale geothermal plant in Germany that will provide electricity for 8,000 homes and district heating for 120,000 homes. GreenEnergyFutures.ca CKUA....

EAVOR has pioneered a new kind of geothermal that can provide heat and power almost anywhere on the planet. This could be the missing link in the energy revolution that could not only help electricity get to net-zero. It also helps solve the even bigger challenge of how to heat buildings with zero emissions. We talk to Jeanine Vany of EAVOR, a company from Calgary, Alberta that has pioneered the n...

Here's what Green Infill looks like! Built to the super energy efficient Passive House standard this 16-unit townhouse style infill project replaced two underutilized single-family homes in Edmonton, Alberta. The homes require just 10% of the heating energy of a regular home, and have no natural gas or bills. We take a tour of this amazing project with developers David and Melissa Campbell of Home...

This project checks all the boxes. T5M Connect replaced two single-family homes with 16 new units of desperately needed housing and the kicker is it was built to the passive house standard in the mostly northerly city in North America. GreenEnergyFutures.ca CKUA.com Podcast

Part 2 - Gregor Robertson, Vancouver's longest-serving mayor set out to create the greenest city in the world. Now he's the Global Ambassador of the Global Covenant of Mayors helping 13,000 other cities take action on climate change. GreenEnergyFutures.ca CKUA.com Podcast Full story GreenEnergyFutures.ca

When Gregor Robertson came up with his campaign slogan of creating the greenest city in the world who knew it would be his most popular focus? He went to become Vancouver's longest-serving Mayor, and although they may not have reached the coveted top spot, they got pretty close. They created a very green building code, increased non-car transportation and attracted a lot of green business to the c...

PART 2 - Summerside PEI had no electricity generation capacity a decade ago and then did some amazing things. First (in part 1) they added wind power, a smart grid and energy storing furnaces. Then they added AI-powered solar microgrids and a solar and battery farm right in the City. The little City with no generation capacity has achieved 62% locally generated renewable energy and become the lead...

PART 1 - Summerside like the province of PEI had no energy production except expensive backup diesel generators just a decade or so ago. Something had to change. So in an amazing transformation, they set up their own utility, built a wind farm in the city, installed a smart grid and thermal energy storing appliances and got to 42-46% renewable energy, all produced locally. And they didn't stop the...

This sounds counterintuitive, but a new study has found Electric Vehicles (EVs) are driving the price of electricity down and increasing net profits for utilities. Thanks to time-of-use pricing EV owners are shifting their charging habits to non-peak times thus making much more efficient use of existing grid resources. GreenEnergyFutures.ca CKUA.com Video Podcast

Mitchell Beer started The Energy Mix, a media service dedicated to covering climate change 10 years ago long before the conventional media took it seriously. We talk to Beer about climate change, journalism, and his media service which has published 30,000 stories on climate change and climate solutons. GreenEnergyFutures.ca CKUA.com Podcast

EVs produce fewer lifecycle emissions than ICE vehicles in countries with dirty grids or clean grids. A study looked at emissions in five countries including China, the US, UK, Germany and Japan and found EVs produce much lower emissions throughout the life of the vehicle. GreenEnergyFutures.ca CKUA.com Podcast

In part 2 of our series on Alberta's new renewable energy rules we learn that 57 projects worth $14 billion are potentially at risk. We talk to Jason Wang of the Pembina Institute which just prepared a map overlay showing the potential impact of new restrictions. We also talk to Vittoria Bellissimo of the Canadian Renewable Energy Association about changes that are coming to the structure of the e...