Building Canada Strong or Building Canada Wrong? Bill C-39 Explained | With Claire Seaborn

How would federal project permitting work under Bill C-39?On October 29, Sara and Ed recorded a live webinar on Bill C-39, the Building Canada Strong Act, with Claire Seaborn of Torys LLP. Claire is a former Chief of Staff to the federal Minister of Energy and Natural Resources, and she co-authored Torys' technical analysis of the bill.Ottawa says C-39 will get major projects built faster without lowering standards. Critics say it hands ministers sweeping new powers at the expense of nature, workers, and Indigenous rights. Sara and Ed are the resident non-lawyers, so Claire kept it in plain language, with help from a couple of restaurant analogies. About Claire Seaborn:Claire Seaborn is a lawyer at Torys LLP in Toronto who helps clients advance infrastructure, energy and mining projects, resolve project-related disputes, and navigate permitting and compliance processes. Previously, Claire spent five years in senior roles at the Government of Canada, including most recently as Chief of Staff to the Minister of Energy and Natural Resources. Claire’s sustainability-focused approach to advancing major projects has been recognized with awards from the Women’s Infrastructure Network, Forward Law Review, and Clean50 Awards. Claire studied political science at the University of British Columbia, studied law at the University of Ottawa, and is a licensed lawyer in Ontario, British Columbia and England & Wales.0:00 Cold Open0:17 Intro: Bill C-39 and Claire Seaborn3:29 The Three Parts of C-39, and Why One Bill7:05 What Changes by Project Type11:24 The Restaurant Analogy: Kitchen vs. Menu14:54 Nuclear: Handing Reviews to the CNSC23:20 From Harper to Trudeau to Carney: How Review Timelines Changed28:58 C-39 and the U.S. Permitting Push36:53 Abundance, Deregulation, and the Big Question40:25 Claire’s Verdict: Net Good for Canada48:36 Audience Q&ASend us a text (if you'd like a response, please include your email)Follow us on:LinkedInBlueskyX/TwitterInstagramEnergy vs Climate relies on the support of our generous listenersDonate to keep Energy vs Climate goingProduced by Bespoke Podcasts

On September 28th, David, Sara, and Ed were back on stage at Energy Disruptors UNITE in Calgary, recording live in front of an audience. The format for this one was four fights worth having:Energy security in an age of chaos,Powering the age of AI,Canada’s role in a reordered world,Building a system that actually works.For each one, they played a clip from last season, with Vijay Vaitheeswaran, Vijay Gadepally and Emily Grubert, plus a not quite live appearance from the Prime Minister, and then argued about what they heard.Then the audience took over, with questions on pausing AI, where Canada’s next climate dollar should go, and who pays for everything if the jobs disappear.Thanks to the Energy Disruptors team for having EvC back!0:00 Cold open: David on batteries0:33 Intro3:20 Fight 1: Energy security in an age of chaos13:55 Fight 2: Powering the age of AI24:33 Fight 3: Canada's role in a reordered world31:40 Fight 4: Building a system that actually works36:19 Audience questionsSend us a text (if you'd like a response, please include your email)Follow us on:LinkedInBlueskyX/TwitterInstagramEnergy vs Climate relies on the support of our generous listenersDonate to keep Energy vs Climate goingProduced by Bespoke Podcasts

Bill McKibben has been sounding the climate alarm since before most were paying attention, but lately he's finally feeling some optimism about solar power in particular.On September 17, renowned author, journalist, and environmentalist Bill McKibben joined us remotely at Protect Our Winters (POW) Canada's 2026 Leadership Summit. He was there to talk about his latest book, Here Comes the Sun: A Last Chance for the Climate and a Fresh Chance for Civilization.Bill is the founder of 350.org and more recently Third Act, which organizes people over 60 for climate action. His 1989 book The End of Nature was pretty much the first written for a general audience on climate change, and his new book argues solar has already won the economic argument.Note, this episode runs differently than our usual format. Bill opens solo for about twenty minutes, then David and I join him for another twenty minutes of conversation. Sara sat this one out.00:00:00 - Episode Intro: Bill McKibben at the POW 2026 Leadership Summit 00:01:27 - Climate Realities & The Clean Energy Transition 00:23:02 - David Keith on Battery Costs & Solar Geoengineering 00:28:56 - The Geopolitics of Chinese Solar Dominance 00:33:44 - Decarbonization Pathways & Energy Solutions for Canada 00:37:15 - Building Citizen Movements & Global "Sun Day" Send us a text (if you'd like a response, please include your email)Follow us on:LinkedInBlueskyX/TwitterInstagramEnergy vs Climate relies on the support of our generous listenersDonate to keep Energy vs Climate goingProduced by Bespoke Podcasts

On September 17, Ed sat down with former Canadian Environment and Climate Change Canada minister Steven Guilbeault for what we called a "fireside exit interview." Steven spent more than three decades in Canada's environmental movement, then spent seven years in federal politics, four of them running Environment and Climate Change Canada. He resigned from cabinet in November 2025 over the Ottawa-Alberta pipeline deal and left Parliament for good in early September, saying Canada is backsliding on climate action.We recorded it live in partnership with Protect Our Winters (POW) Canada at its 2026 Leadership Summit. David and Sara sat this one out; it was just Steven and Ed and a room full of POW's supporters and ambassadors. Ed's known Steven for a long time, so they had a frank and insightful conversation about climate, advocacy and the vicissitudes of political life.Send us a text (if you'd like a response, please include your email)Follow us on:LinkedInBlueskyX/TwitterInstagramEnergy vs Climate relies on the support of our generous listenersDonate to keep Energy vs Climate goingProduced by Bespoke Podcasts

This is a replay of our conversation with Dr. Blake Shaffer, an energy economist at the University of Calgary, on Canada's electrification bet. We recorded this in spring 2023, right after the federal budget's big bet on clean electricity. With AI data centres now competing for the same grid capacity electrification needs, it might be even more relevant than it was in 2023.Chapters:0:00 – Replaying Canada's electrification bet 4:52 – David's new gig: climate systems engineering at UChicago 7:16 – Why electrify: Blake's primer on capacity vs. generation 17:35 – Growth rates, NIMBYism, and selling the switch to consumers 22:11 – Capacity factor, availability, and the "clean" vs. "zero-emission" fight 26:31 – Transmission bottlenecks and interprovincial politics 36:07 – Social license, orphan wells, and Danielle Smith's pushback 44:41 – Grid instability, audience Q&A, and closing thoughtsAbout Our Guest:Blake Shaffer is an Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Calgary where he teaches and researches on electricity markets, climate policy, and energy transitions. Shaffer uses empirical methods to evaluate policy effectiveness and better understand consumer and firm behaviour. Shaffer strives to bring rigorous evidence to help policy makers craft better policy.Send us a text (if you'd like a response, please include your email)Follow us on:LinkedInBlueskyX/TwitterInstagramEnergy vs Climate relies on the support of our generous listenersDonate to keep Energy vs Climate goingProduced by Bespoke Podcasts

This is a replay of our conversation with Dr. Shirley Meng from the University of Chicago on battery storage. It's one of our favourite deep dives because batteries touch everything from EV range anxiety to grid scale storage, and even the whole critical minerals conversation.When we recorded this in May 2024, Shirley was predicting real solid state battery platforms by 2027 or 2028, and here we are getting close to that window, so it's worth listening again with that timeline in mind. The fights over re-shoring battery manufacturing, the US-China race, the economics of lithium versus sodium, all of it is just as live today as it was then, or maybe even more so.Episode page and show notes.About Our Guest:Dr. Y. Shirley Meng is a Professor at the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering at the University of Chicago. She serves as the Chief Scientist of the Argonne Collaborative Center for Energy Storage Science (ACCESS) Argonne National Laboratory. Dr. Meng is the principal investigator of the research group - Laboratory for Energy Storage and Conversion (LESC), that was established at University of California San Diego since 2009. She held the Zable Chair Professor in Energy Technologies at University of California San Diego (UCSD) from 2017-2022.Send us a text (if you'd like a response, please include your email)Follow us on:LinkedInBlueskyX/TwitterInstagramEnergy vs Climate relies on the support of our generous listenersDonate to keep Energy vs Climate goingProduced by Bespoke Podcasts

Decarbonization usually means addition: more wind, solar, EVs. But a real transition also means taking something away.We talk about decarbonization like it's a shopping list: more wind, more solar, more EVs, stacked on top of whatever's already running. But a real transition means something also has to come off the list. Fossil systems have to shrink at the same time clean systems grow, and for a good stretch in the middle, both have to serve the same demand at once. Neither one can do the job alone, and each ends up constraining the other.Civil engineer and environmental sociologist Emily Grubert (University of Notre Dame) calls this overlap the mid-transition, and it's the subject of a paper she co-wrote with Sara. Ed sits down with both of them to work through what the concept actually means once you get past the label.Some of what's in this one:Why refineries and coal plants can't just wind down smoothly to zero, and where the "minimum viable scale" wall actually sitsWhat Alberta's coal phase-out got right, what it missed, and why the coal companies got compensated a lot faster than the communities didWhether the oil sands could shrink one asset at a time, or whether losing one piece, a pipeline, an upgrader, takes more of the system down with itThe uncomfortable question at the centre of it all: is a slow, managed phase-out actually the safer path, or just a longer runway for incumbents to extract concessions on the way out.0:00 Intro0:35 Cold Open2:00 What Is the Mid-Transition?4:36 The 80/20 Rule: Are We Already In It?5:55 Decarbonization Means Subtraction Too8:50 What Each System Forces on the Other12:38 Refineries and the Limits of Ramping Down15:46 Alberta's Coal Phase-Out, Explained20:52 Managing Coal Decline in the US24:11 Fast Payouts for Companies, Slow Support for Communities27:58 Can the Oil Sands Shrink Smoothly?35:13 Long Mid-Transition or Short? The Band-Aid QuestionSend us a text (if you'd like a response, please include your email)Follow us on:LinkedInBlueskyX/TwitterInstagramEnergy vs Climate relies on the support of our generous listenersDonate to keep Energy vs Climate goingProduced by Bespoke Podcasts

Octopus Energy paid its UK customers collectively over £100,000 during a recent heat wave, not through new infrastructure, but a text message and a price signal offering demand flexibility. That caught our attention.In this episode, Ed and Sara (David sits this one out) talk with Eric Davids, Head of Strategy for Octopus Energy's US business, about redefining utility-customer relationships, how approaches in the UK stack up against North American utilities' much blunter "please conserve" grid alerts, and what happens when consumers get real price exposure and it doesn't go well.🎙️ TIMESTAMPS0:50 – Episode intro1:54 – Welcome Eric Davids5:55 – What is demand flexibility?7:38 – Inside Octopus's £100K UK heat wave response9:49 – Alberta's grid alerts vs. Octopus's incentives22:09 – Guardrails against price exposure risk (Winter Storm Uri)28:19 – Is this just another hype cycle?35:43 – Equity and the energy transitionSend us a text (if you'd like a response, please include your email)Follow us on:LinkedInBlueskyX/TwitterInstagramEnergy vs Climate relies on the support of our generous listenersDonate to keep Energy vs Climate goingProduced by Bespoke Podcasts

They say there's no growth without feedback. This season, you've given us plenty of it.In this episode, David, Sara, and Ed do something most podcasters shouldn't do: they read the comments. Out loud and on purpose.Some feedback was positive. Some was additive. Some fell into the category we're calling "strongly suggestive." If you've ever left a comment on an EvC clip wondering whether David, Sara and Ed actually saw it: they did. This is what they had to say back.Send us a text (if you'd like a response, please include your email)Follow us on:LinkedInBlueskyX/TwitterInstagramEnergy vs Climate relies on the support of our generous listenersDonate to keep Energy vs Climate goingProduced by Bespoke Podcasts

Ed's new project, Critical Mass, starts with a deceptively simple question: if Canada decides it wants more nuclear power, can it actually deliver it? The answer turns out to be complicated.As part of the project, we're hosting four live town halls across the country. The first was recorded at Toronto Climate Week on June 5, featuring Todd Smith (former Ontario Minister of Energy, now VP at Candu Energy) and Brendan Frank (VP of Policy at Clean Prosperity). Together they work through the project's core tensions - cost, democratic legitimacy, and standardization - with the kind of honest talk you've come to expect from EvC.Thank you to Geoff Burt and The Consecon Foundation for helping make the evening possible. Send us a text (if you'd like a response, please include your email)Follow us on:LinkedInBlueskyX/TwitterInstagramEnergy vs Climate relies on the support of our generous listenersDonate to keep Energy vs Climate goingProduced by Bespoke Podcasts