Blue energy: powering the future with Marine Renewables Canada

Waves, river currents, and tidal turbines could help power Canada's clean energy future. Trevor speaks with Elisa Obermann, Executive Director at Marine Renewables Canada, about the promise of marine energy and how countries like Canada are pursuing its potential. They explore how emerging 'blue energy' technologies complement solar and wind, support coastal and Indigenous communities, and move us toward a more sustainable, diverse net-zero grid.

Related links

• Marine Renewables Canada: https://marinerenewables.ca/

• Fundy Ocean Research Center for Energy (FORCE): https://fundyforce.ca/

• canmetENERGY: https://natural-resources.canada.ca/science-data/science-research/research-centres/canmetenergy

• Yuquot Wave Energy Project: https://barkley.ca/project/yuquot-wave-energy-project/

• Blind Channel Tidal Energy Demonstration Centre: https://onlineacademiccommunity.uvic.ca/primed/blind-channel/

• European Marine Energy Center (EMEC): https://www.emec.org.uk/

• Canadian Hydrokinetic Turbine Test Centre: (CHTTC): http://www.chttc.ca/

• Elisa Obermann on LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/elisa-obermann-07469245/

• Trevor Freeman on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/trevor-freeman-p-eng-8b612114

• Hydro Ottawa: https://hydroottawa.com/en

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Transcript:

Trevor Freeman 00:00

Welcome to thinkenergy, 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 think energy at hydro ottawa.com, hi everyone, and welcome back. I have a really great conversation for you today, but before I get to that, I think it's worth a minute or two of time to revisit some first principles people approach the energy conversation from all different backgrounds and angles, and I think it's good to make sure that we're all on the same page when it comes to some foundational knowledge before we dive into our topic today, the thing that I want to quickly review is electricity generation. Now don't worry, we're not going to get into an advanced physics level of knowledge on this, but I just want to quickly refresh everyone on the basics. And by the same token, to all of you advanced physics folks out there that are listening, please forgive me if I'm slightly off on a detail or two, as long as I don't mess up the core foundational information. So for the most part, the electricity that we use is primarily generated by spinning a coil of wire around a magnet, or inversely, spinning a magnet inside a coil of wire that causes electrons to move, and that flow of electrons is electricity. For the most part, that combination of coiled wire and magnets and a spinning motion is what makes most of our electricity. There is one major exception to this, which is solar power that doesn't involve spinning anything. But other than that, our major electricity sources utilize that spinning motion, and I'm not including hydrogen fuel cells here as a major source of electricity. So let's keep going with this spinning idea. Then the next question is, how do we make things spin? One very common method is heat. Let's say you burn something, coal or natural gas, for example, which creates heat. You then use that heat to boil water, which makes steam, which you can push at high pressure against turbine blades to make them spin. It's as simple as that. The problem is, burning things creates harmful emissions, which are causing climate change. You can also generate heat with non emitting sources, and a major one, especially here in Ontario, is nuclear power, splitting atoms in a controlled environment, a nuclear reaction generates heat and then the process is the same as previously described. So as complex as a nuclear reactor is its main purpose when it comes to electricity generation, is simply making heat so we can boil water and create steam, et cetera, other than heat. The other way to make things spin is to utilize naturally occurring kinetic energy. So that means something that's already happening out there that carries a lot of force that can push a turbine blade. This would include wind energy, so using the force of the wind to turn large wind turbines and hydro electricity, which uses water being pulled downhill by gravity, so a flowing river or a large dam to turn that turbine the same end results that spinning motion, but no need to create heat to get there. We're almost done with the science lesson, so just bear with me for another few seconds as we think about reducing our carbon emissions, finding ways to generate electricity that don't require burning fossil fuels is really important. Solar definitely has a role to play, but we also need more emissions free ways to spin things. I mentioned some of the more traditional ones, like solar and wind energy, but today's conversation is about some lesser known, emerging methods, which are covered by the term marine renewable energy generation. Phew, it was a long walk to get there, but we finally got here. All of that is to tee up my conversation today with Elisa Obermann, the Executive Director of Marine Renewables Canada. Marine Renewables Canada is the National Association for tidal wave and river current energy in addition to offshore wind. But it's those first three generation strategies that I am particularly interested in as non mainstream ways to spin things. These technologies are known as blue energy, but are often overshadowed by the more common renewable energies that we talked about, solar and wind generation. So I'm really excited to chat with Elisa to shed some light on them. Today. Elisa has served as the executive director of marine renewables Canada since 2015 she's a founding member of both the Electricity Alliance Canada and the Canadian Council on Renewable Electricity. She has also worked for several other organizations that focus on clean technology, tidal energy and the broader renewable energy sector, including Sustainable Development Technology Canada, the Fundy Ocean Research Center for Energy. Which you'll hear us talk about today as force and Nova scotia's Department of Energy. Elisa Obermann, welcome to the show.

Elisa Obermann 05:07

Hi. Thank you very much for having me.

Trevor Freeman 05:09

So, let's start off kind of with the basics. Elisa, why don't you tell us a little bit about your background and how you got into this pretty unique space in the energy sector that we're going to dive into a little bit more.

Elisa Obermann 05:22

Sure. So I decided after doing my undergrad, so I'm going kind of way back here, all the way back. Yeah, exactly. I did a degree, a bachelor's degree in English, but I really wanted to get involved in something that would help me do more for the environment, play a role in the future. So I decided to go back to school to do a public policy degree. And the first internship I had was with Nova Scotia Department of Energy, and it was actually on the oil and gas side of things, but my thinking was, well, this will get me eventually to where I want to go and working more in renewables. And that's essentially exactly what happened. And so I started working more and more there on renewable energy. Then started working on the province's marine renewable energy strategy. So it really kind of got me into this kind of path of, you know, working on climate change and renewable energy. And the other thing I will also say is that I grew up in Maine and really close to the ocean, and so after university, I moved to Toronto for a while, and I thought to myself, like, I really just want to do something that takes me back to the ocean. So this really combines both kind of goals I had for myself, in terms of working to protect and help the environment, and then also staying close to the ocean.

Trevor Freeman 06:35

Yeah. I mean, that makes a ton of sense. It's interesting. I talked to a lot of peopl