Canada's energy transition isn't coming. It's already here. As 2025 winds down, Trevor shares a holiday rewind featuring five of the most electrifying conversations from the thinkenergy podcast this year. From clean energy trends and Hydro Ottawa's investment plan to grid modernization, the rise of DERs, and decarbonizing buildings. Sit down with something warm and revisit the insights, challenges, and big ideas that defined our fast-moving energy landscape in 2025. Related links Episode 149 (Looking ahead at 2025 clean energy trends): https://thinkenergypodcast.com/episodes/looking-ahead-at-2025-clean-energy-trends/ Episode 160 (Digging into Hydro Ottawa's historically large investment plan): https://thinkenergypodcast.com/episodes/summer-rewind-digging-into-hydro-ottawas-historically-large-investment-plan/ Episode 162 (Consumer impact: revisiting grid modernization with Capgemini Canada): https://thinkenergypodcast.com/episodes/consumer-impact-revisiting-grid-modernization-with-capgemini-canada/ Episode 163 (How Distributed Energy Resources (DERs) are reshaping the grid): https://thinkenergypodcast.com/episodes/thinkenergy-shorts-how-distributed-energy-resources-ders-are-reshaping-the-grid/ Episode 150 (Decarbonizing Canada's buildings with the Building Decarbonization Alliance): https://thinkenergypodcast.com/episodes/decarbonizing-canadas-buildings-with-the-building-decarbonization-alliance/ Trevor Freeman on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/trevor-freeman-p-eng-cem-leed-ap-8b612114/ Hydro Ottawa: https://hydroottawa.com/en To subscribe using Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/thinkenergy/id1465129405 To subscribe using Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7wFz7rdR8Gq3f2WOafjxpl To subscribe on Libsyn: http://thinkenergy.libsyn.com/ --- Subscribe so you don't miss a video: https://www.youtube.com/user/hydroottawalimited Follow along on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hydroottawa Stay in the know on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HydroOttawa Keep up with the posts on X: https://twitter.com/thinkenergypod -------- 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. This is our special holiday rewind edition of the thinkenergy podcast, which has become a bit of a tradition around here. I'm your host, Trevor Freeman, and as we settle into the final days of the year, it feels like the perfect time to slow down and take a look back at some of the conversations that we feel really shaped 2025 at least, for the podcast and in our own minds. This year, we explored everything from grid modernization to decarbonizing buildings distributed energy resources (DERs) and some of the technologies that are really defining how Canadians live, work and stay connected. Today's episode is the first of a two-part holiday rewind series, each part highlighting five standout episodes that we feel really sparked ideas curiosity and great discussions throughout the year. So pull up a comfortable seat, pour yourself something seasonal and festive, and join me as we revisit some of the insights and innovations that we feel lit up 2025 to start with, we kicked off 2025 with a forward looking conversation on some of the trends that we thought might shape the year, and to be honest that many of them unfolded even more quickly than we expected. In our first episode of 2025 we looked at clean energy trends. We talked through how electrification and AI driven grid intelligence and new customer expectations were really going to change the landscape in real time for us, here's a moment that we captured just how quickly the industry is accelerating and why adaptability is so important to us. At the same time, utilities across the country will continue to invest in grid modernization. So as well as infrastructure expansion, not just modernization, we're also building and growing our grids to keep up with the pace of change, but we need to also be able to leverage more DERs on the grid, so more distributed energy resources, small scale solar generation, things like that. So we will continue to see utilities make steps in that direction. They will look to levels of government to support those initiatives, through programs and funding and regulatory change. So we will continue to see that change in grid modernization, but I know it's definitely a big topic for us here at hydro Ottawa. And finally, in this section, energy efficiency. Energy efficiency is not new. It's been around for quite a while. In fact, it was the primary focus, kind of before we shifted a little bit more towards thinking about carbon. But we cannot fully decarbonize, we cannot fully electrify without significant energy efficiency. We just won't be able to affordably build the infrastructure we need if we're not using energy in an efficient way. So that will continue to be a focus. And in fact, I mentioned the new incentive programs from the province of Ontario that is very much designed to support ongoing energy efficiency measures. So we will continue to see that as a focus in 2025 and our final area, area number five, is technology. So there is no year anymore. In fact, maybe there never was where technology doesn't continue to grow and expand and evolve in ways that we couldn't even imagine, and it does seem like the pace of change is picking up, but I think that's kind of normal. So we will see technology that supports or augments the energy transition continue to evolve in 2025 and the ways that technology influenced that really, you know, we have an idea on some of them, and it'll be interesting to look back in 12 months at what we know in December, 2025 that we didn't even know here today in January. So there you have it. That's going back 12 months. And my expectation of what 2025 might have in store in the new year, I'll be doing a similar deep dive on some of the trends that we've been seeing over the course of this year and what we might expect to continue into 2026 but that idea that the pace of change is accelerating certainly became one of the defining themes of the year, and I think is something that we can expect to stick with us for the foreseeable future. And I think you'll hear echoes of that in all the different episodes that we revisit today. Next up, a modern, reliable grid doesn't just happen. It's built through long term planning, thoughtful investments and a deep understanding of how our communities are growing and how their energy needs are changing. In an episode that we. Least back in June, we unpacked hydro Ottawa's 2026 to 2030 investment plan, and what that means for reliability and customer experience and preparing the system for tomorrow. In this next clip, I chat with Hydro Ottawa's Guillaume Paradis to really get into why it's so critical that we get our investment in the next five years, right for our grid, so that that's a nice segue into his next question, which is, of course, there's a cost for this, and this is why it is an investment plan we're out there outlining. These are our targets. This is what we want to do, but there's a cost to that, and so if we don't do this, if we said, look, we just can't put that extra investment into these areas, what are the implications on the grid, on our service? And let's look at kind of like, quality of service, reliability, safety, etc, if we don't make these investments that we are identifying right now. Guillaume Paradis 06:03 Yeah, so it's pretty direct, right? What we've done for the in preparation for our rate application, in preparation for to develop our plans for 26 to 2030 is we've considered all the needs. We've looked at how old the assets are, how quickly they're deteriorating, how many might require replacement over the next five years, what would be an appropriate rate of replacement to ensure that we don't let risk build up in our system, we don't cause reliability issues. We've looked at how we make sure that we can provide service to our customers, that we can connect them in a timely manner, that we can do all those things in a fashion that is safe and ensures the safety of the public, our customers. And so a lot of thought goes into what is required over the next five years. And then on top of those factors and considerations, we also look at what impact will this have financially on our customers, because we're mindful that our service does affect, you know, our customers live, yes, in a positive manner when our service is reliable and power is available, but also financially. From a cost standpoint, we add to other pressures that everyone experiences in their lives, and so we want to be very judicious in setting the size of our programs the level of investments in managing those various factors, right? So we have a multifaceted responsibility, and we weigh all those factors in in our setting the plans for the future. So doing so looking five years out, as you can probably imagine, you know, if we didn't constrain the plans, if we just did everything our planning engineers would like to do, we would have spent probably another 50% more than what is in the current plan. So looking at old assets, looking at the service levels we want to deliver, we could have spent a significantly larger amount of money if it was purely based on we'll call them planning, you know, drivers. But as I said, we are mindful that we're responsible for the quality of our service on behalf of all our customers.
