(37) Toronto Green Standard, Geothermal, District Energy; tools to decarbonize the built environment - David McMillan, John Rathbone, Ben Gilbank

In this episode, we discuss the Decarbonizing The Built Environment and the future of green building practices with three experts: David McMillan, from the City of Toronto; Ben Gilbank, Founder and CEO of Alt Crest Energy; and John Rathbone, CEO and Co-Founder of Rothco EMG.

This episode delves into Toronto’s ambitious goal to achieve net-zero emissions by 2040, addressing the roles played by regulations, renewable energy systems like geothermal and air source heat pumps, district energy solutions, and the challenges and opportunities in transitioning to sustainable infrastructure. Gain insights into how public policy and private sector collaboration can pave the way for a sustainable future.

• Toronto’s goal of Net Zero by 2040
• Energy as a Service definition and benefits
• Renewable Energy Systems, pros and cons.
• Cost of Toronto’s Green Standards
• Challenges in Energy and Building Models
• Long-Term Views and Solutions
• Cost Considerations and Collaboration
• Developer Mindsets and Risk Management
• Geo Exchange and City Planning
• Exploring the Toolbox: Geothermal and Heat Pumps
• Air Source vs. Ground Source Heat Pump
• Economies of Scale in Geothermal Projects
• District Energy Systems Explained
• Decarbonizing the existing buildings

For more information, please refer to RealEstateDevelopmentInsights.com

Take our Free Assessment at: DevelopmentReadinessAssessment.com

Transcript

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 0:01

Good afternoon everyone. Thank you for being here today. David, Ben, John, it's a privilege to have you on the show. David, why don't we start by you introducing yourself to our audience and then we'll go through Ben and John.

squadcaster-0cfh_1_09-08-2025_160627 0:15

Yeah. Thanks Pam. thanks for having me. I'm David McMillan. I am the manager of the System Solutions Team, within the environment and climate and forestry division at the city of Toronto. what my team is responsible for, is anything related to new green buildings and renewable energy systems. my background, I'm actually, I have an undergrad in applied science and a master's in city planning. and so I try to do in a nutshell is, ensure that the built environment in Toronto contributes to, our emissions reductions plan, getting to net zero by 2040. And so that involves new construction and infrastructure as well.

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 0:55

Perfect. Thank you very much. Net zero by 2040. We'll come to that in a second. Ben. It's yours.

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 1:02

Super. Yeah. Thanks Pam, and thanks for having me. Um, Gil, bank founder and CEO of Alt Crest Energy. We're an energy developer based here in Toronto, but operating across Canada. We're an energy as a service, uh,

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 1:16

energy developers. So effectively we

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 1:18

invest in

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 1:19

in onsite energy systems.

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 1:21

on

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 1:21

we have real estate owners

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 1:23

um,

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 1:24

charge it back under energy service framework. We

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 1:27

have three

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 1:28

have three main verticals at our company. We have geothermal,

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 1:31

multi-res, which I think

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 1:32

which

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 1:33

be focusing on

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 1:34

today

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 1:34

We

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 1:35

we also do

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 1:35

solar for

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 1:36

for

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 1:36

buildings. And third, we

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 1:38

we

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 1:38

microgrids or distributed generation for high power users. So all of this is with the goal of, reducing carbon emissions, but also developing a financing

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 1:48

financing, alternative to

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 1:49

transition easier for real estate owners.

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 1:52

Perfect Financing for transition. I do wanna talk about that in depth. That would be great. Thank you. John, do you.

squadcaster-bcj0_1_09-08-2025_160626 1:59

Thanks, Pam. my name's John Rathbone. I'm the CEO and co-founder of Rothco, EMG, as well as the overview platform. I've been a consulting engineer for over 18 years now. wow, that kind of seems weird saying that out loud. 11 of those years was, has been spent in the energy and specifically renewable energy space, district energy systems, geo exchange, et cetera. we specialize in this area, from everything from early planning work through feasibility to detailed design. Commissioning and we're now getting into the operations and management of certain assets on behalf of owners. And so we find ourselves, being invited to contribute to projects or conversations that I think a lot of other more traditional engineers don't get invited to just due to the nature of the industry and how it's emerging. And there is no, status quo, I would say just yet. So it's a really interesting career path at the moment.

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 2:53

Perfect. Should we give credit or blame David for some of that change?

squadcaster-bcj0_1_09-08-2025_160626 2:58

I would give him a ton of credit. we, we need a very strong municipalities because we don't really have strong leadership at the provincial or federal level on these files. And, people like David are absolutely critical for these goals and initiatives to be realized.

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 3:15

Perfect. Okay, lemme go back to David. David, you talked about net zero by 2040. For those of our audience, including myself, who do not have a clear definition of net zero, what is net zero? Why is it important?

squadcaster-0cfh_1_09-08-2025_160627 3:28

In Toronto's case, when we say net zero, we mean net zero emissions. And that's important. because, I think in the past, historically, net zero is understood to mean net zero energy because it largely came from the building space. and we can get into it, but certain buildings, sure it's possible to do net zero energy, meaning you produce. of your own energy on site. But in a city like Toronto and many other cities, with our form where we're building tall, dense buildings, net zero energy really doesn't make a lot of sense. And, in my opinion, it's not really necessary because to decarbonize doesn't mean you have to produce all your own energy. We have the grid and it's an amazing tool. We should use it, I think. But, so for our purposes though, we are trying to get to net zero emissions, meaning by the year 2040, we've essentially, we've reduced emissions as much as we can on our own. The net means recognizing that there will likely be some residual sources that we will have to deal with. We have a policy that says how we deal with that, and it's primarily through removals. But to be clear, we have not really explored that path any detail yet. We're just assuming that in 2039 we'll be able to purchase, carbon removals to, to offset the rest of those emissions, but. in practical terms, it means we need to, try and stop using fossil fuels, at least in new construction today, and then fuel switch the rest of our buildings and other systems over time. basically over the next, 15 years,

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 4:48

Okay. These are very technical topics. I'm a construction guy. I'm gonna try and dumb it down for myself. So basically, if I'm gonna go for net zero, net zero emission, not energy in the building, I want to try and reduce the amounts of emissions my buildings is giving out and close to zero as possible. And if I cannot make it happen, you're gonna make me pay some fee by 2040 to make up the difference. Did I get that right?

squadcaster-0cfh_1_09-08-2025_160627 5:13

it's not yet clear if we're going to require building owners, so the private sector to offset their emissions. we don't currently do that. when I say the city is gonna be net zero, really what I mean is, for now all we've committed to is as a corporation, we will zero out all our emissions as the government of the

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 5:29

I see. Like the governing body itself, not the city as a geographic area.

squadcaster-0cfh_1_09-08-2025_160627 5:34

that's correct. Yeah. and for that is because, and we can get into it, but, I think at this point, if we were to require widespread offsets, that might actually be more problematic, given a lot of the challenges in that space. But, but to be fair, we're just not there yet. That, that market for us is still, pretty unclear. But day we will likely have to, at least think about, how we require the private sector to, to zero out their emissions as well.

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 5:59

Okay. So let's talk about the possible levers in that equation. You and I met, at a project about a couple months ago that we were building. And in that building we were very close to net zero, if not at the mark. 'cause we don't have anything that is a fuel related, fossil fuel related except for the emergency generator. Is that generally how you would envision that type of, typology of building to go forward?

squadcaster-0cfh_1_09-08-2025_160627 6:26

Yeah. So if you are not using any fossil fuels on site, you're like 90% of the way there. Because you've essentially electrified, but there is still emissions associated with the electricity from the grid. There is some that you would still have to offset, to truly get to net zero emissions. How you do that is a choice that depends in many cases on the constraints of your site. But like an easy one to think about is solar pv, right? that's a way to, now again, with the built form, it can be a challenge, but, that's one that's worth exploring. then beyond that, really what you are getting into is offsite, type, so like credits, offsets, removals, that sort of thing. and again, we don't have any. requirements. We don't even really have any guidance yet for how a developer or owner might do that. But of course there are some that do because there are third party programs, for example, that the Canada Green Building Council runs where they do have more guidance on offset programs. And so that is an option, but not a requirement. But to truly get to net omissions in Toronto, beyond the bit you'd be able to do with like solar pv, you're probably looking at some kind of, third party, certified offset program.

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 7:31

Gotcha. Thank you very much. We'll come back to the Toronto Green Standard and the TGS, and I do want to have a chat about that, but let's go to Ben. energy as a service, that's your business model. Maybe just elaborate for us at the beginning. What does that entail? How does that work? And I guess I wanted toward the end of it, I want to, hopefully we're able to get to a point to define what is a sweet spot, what scale project, what type of projects should be talking to you or thinking about this type of system.

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 8:03

Yeah, absolutely. Probably the best way to look at energy as a service is to look at

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 8:08

Look at what the base is

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 8:10

business as

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 8:11

as usual

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 8:11

in absence of energy as a service. So, uh, Pam,

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 8:15

Pam, you, you built

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 8:16

so

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 8:16

this, you know, you know, there's many components to a building. One of them would be mechanical system.

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 8:21

another key

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 8:22

Another key component would be the electrical system.

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 8:24

And, in business,

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 8:25

business, again, we use this term

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 8:27

or business as

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 8:27

business as usual.

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 8:28

you would

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 8:28

How you would build that building in

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 8:30

of

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 8:31

using alternative delivery method like

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 8:33

a

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 8:33

service. let's build a typical

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 8:35

midrise or tall

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 8:36

multi

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 8:37

building. A

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 8:38

building.

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 8:38

um, you know,

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 8:39

You know,

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 8:40

this

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 8:40

this is kind

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 8:41

boiler chiller, cooling tower, four pipe fan coil terminal

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 8:45

terminal

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 8:46

type of building, right? This is very common or two pipe in some cases, but, in a lot of buildings

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 8:51

building

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 8:51

like that

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 8:52

that,

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 8:52

in the last little while. So

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 8:54

so really that's the case, but just by definition, that's like

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 8:57

driven system for

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 8:59

right? Heating in the.

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 9:00

in the winter as well as domestic hot water. So, most

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 9:04

Most developers would be familiar with that.

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 9:06

Geothermal effectively in this case, removes that

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 9:10

moves that sort of central

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 9:11

or at least

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 9:12

place, most of it,

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 9:13

And

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 9:13

and replaces it with a

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 9:14

grade

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 9:15

great ground source heat

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 9:16

wanna step on

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 9:17

pump. I don't wanna on

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 9:17

'cause he's

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 9:18

johnstone million times

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 9:19

and

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 9:20

and

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 9:20

he's a

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 9:20

faster at it, but effectively you're now using

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 9:23

as a

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 9:23

a heat source, heat sink to heating Cool your building.

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 9:25

And, but the

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 9:26

The effect is that you wipe out the need for those traditional P

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 9:29

under the BAU case. Here's the

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 9:33

through the,

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 9:33

That

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 9:34

that geothermal system is very often

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 9:37

more expensive

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 9:38

than the

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 9:39

case. just

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 9:41

Let's just use,

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 9:42

of two x 'cause it's

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 9:44

because it's actually pretty close. It floats around that. But let's just use,

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 9:48

So if you

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 9:48

so if you were to spend a million bucks on a traditional mechanical system,

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 9:52

cool a building, boiler chiller, cooling tower, and then you said, Hey, I'd rather do geothermal 'cause it's low carbon. price tag might be around 2 million bucks. And you

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 10:02

And you go, huh?

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 10:03

I've got

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 10:04

I've got this thing called a budget, and what's really important about that is

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 10:07

determines how I make money on real

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 10:09

on real estate, let's be honest,

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 10:10

why do

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 10:11

why do developers get into this?

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 10:12

So what

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 10:13

So what energy as a service is we come in

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 10:15

and we

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 10:16

and we say, we will put in the 2 million bucks

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 10:19

in the

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 10:19

the business of

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 10:21

infrastructure

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 10:22

associated with real estate in this geo system.

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 10:26

And

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 10:26

And

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 10:27

design, build, own, operate, and

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 10:30

and maintain. D boom,

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 10:32

That

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 10:32

that system wraps around it

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 10:35

and the

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 10:35

and the developer goes, huh, what does that mean? But that means that

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 10:38

not only are

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 10:39

not only you saving the 2 million bucks

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 10:41

net

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 10:41

and that saving a million bucks, because again, we've wiped out the need for your,

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 10:45

and cooling tower. So the

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 10:47

so the goal of energy as a service is just that.

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 10:49

to be

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 10:51

be a sort of

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 10:53

financial

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 10:54

solution

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 10:54

to

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 10:55

to solve a problem where.

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 10:56

developer may not do this solution absent for. An alternative delivery method. So the

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 11:03

So the goal is to run capital savings

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 11:06

and I can

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 11:06

and

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 11:07

the nuances of this,

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 11:08

the of this operating

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 11:09

over a term. Of course, you're hitting greenhouse, gas standards. We make David happy by keeping low carbon

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 11:14

carbon

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 11:15

in the city of Toronto. Happy. So this is

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 11:17

is Energy Services. In nutshell, it's a

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 11:20

delivery

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 11:20

delivery which sort of threads the needle of a

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 11:22

technical

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 11:23

solution,

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 11:24

a

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 11:24

but a commercial challenge just by virtue of the premium

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 11:27

cost relative to A

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 11:28

relative to a VU.

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 11:29

you're a

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 11:29

You're a developer, your profiting.

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 11:31

you may just

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 11:32

You may just do the BUI don't blame you.

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 11:33

it. absent choosing us.

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 11:35

And, I like the way you framed it, that it could be perceived as a financial service or financial product is, which is probably has a significant technical, component or ailment inside that, financial a product. So if, I just wanna make sure I'm clear on this. In today's economy, if this, if I look at it just based on dollar value, I, it could be present dollar value, it could be NPV, it could be however you define the dollar value. Would I, outside of any incentives or any government rebates or anything else, would I benefit from, in, using this type of setup on my project on a dollar value basis? And at first, I guess the primary set of capital and also over the opex of the building.

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 12:21

Yeah, I think so. I'm very biased, but the,

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 12:25

will take, we'll take that into consideration, but being biased.

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 12:29

Yeah,

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 12:29

Yeah, that's

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 12:30

heavy

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 12:31

disc.

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 12:31

bias here, but let's go

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 12:32

Let's go back to

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 12:33

developer, right? 'cause you're a developer and you're making a choice of which direction you want to go and how you want to implement that, don't need to tell you construction costs are high and, serious escalation and costs over the last few

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 12:44

for the few years.

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 12:45

we all know

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 12:45

we all know that it's a challenging residential market build into right now just in terms of conditions,

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 12:50

you know,

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 12:51

you know, financing and probably we touch on this later with CMC and ways to finance

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 12:56

buildings.

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 12:57

People are

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 12:58

at every angle they

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 12:59

at angle they can, to

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 13:00

finance position

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 13:02

position themselves to earn

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 13:03

through development. And look, if we're, 2

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 13:07

2 million

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 13:07

I recognize a lot of projects have large budgets and maybe 2 million bucks isn't enough to move the needle or, but maybe it is. And I think a lot of

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 13:15

these days. It is.

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 13:16

dcs like the list goes on. So if you

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 13:19

So if you think about us almost in a form

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 13:21

financing where you can

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 13:22

where you can have your cake needed to

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 13:24

finance

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 13:25

the

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 13:25

geothermal

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 13:27

component,

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 13:27

take

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 13:27

you take that 2 million bucks

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 13:29

would've had to fund from equity or debt. And you

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 13:31

and you add that sort of to your capital stack.

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 13:34

And then

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 13:34

And then add to that the fact that,

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 13:36

you can

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 13:36

you be comfortable knowing the tenants

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 13:39

if it's

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 13:40

it's rental

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 13:40

or owners, if it's condo

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 13:43

down the road are not gonna be paying

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 13:45

would

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 13:45

more than they would

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 13:46

a business. As usual

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 13:47

usual case

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 13:47

get into the opex

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 13:48

opex later

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 13:49

We, we think, again, bias

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 13:51

Bias here heavy, but

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 13:52

a

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 13:52

it's a win-win, save on the CapEx

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 13:54

the opex, get

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 13:56

enhanced

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 13:57

through CMHC.

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 13:58

H

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 13:59

You meet the City of Toronto requirements

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 14:00

requirements

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 14:01

the built environment, again, we think it threads the

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 14:04

needle. that's good. Thank you very much. I'm gonna go to you, John, the way I look at our panel here today is that David is, in a position and David is in his team and his, the entity is kind of directing us or forcing us, or however you want to call it, pushing us toward a vision for our city, our built environment. Right? And Ben, the way I look at it is, has a toolbox or people, other people are like Ben, which are great. We have a lot of very sophisticated providers in our city, which are very fortunate. We're fortunate to have them. I have had the privilege of working with a couple of them. You are the one who basically probably like my, at least my interpretation, and please by all means, correct me if I'm wrong, you're the one who sits there and says, okay, we want to get to that point that David wants, and I have this toolbox that did Ben and other, companies provide, how do I put this to use, how do I mix it up? Is that a correct interpretation of your role and how you would look at it?

squadcaster-bcj0_1_09-08-2025_160626 15:02

That absolutely is one of our roles. And so it to continue in the full disclaimer, mantra here, we are not technology, specific. We are actually a very technology neutral company. my sustainability friends don't like this, but we are happy to do a natural gas BAU building, system as well. Although that's not our brand and that's not what we specialize in, but we actually sell studies on a regular basis, to help put numbers exact question of, should I do the BAU or should I do a geo system, or should I do a wastewater energy system? Should I connect to the district energy, utility, et cetera. and what we have found, working in this market for the last decade here in the GTA, is that around seven plus or minus, out of every 10 projects we analyze geo makes the most sense. And then when it comes to the business model, comes down to the business model of the developer on whether or not energy as a service makes a lot of sense for them. But we're finding that also makes a lot of sense, as Ben's saying in terms of threading the needle, reducing upfront capital, providing much better long-term opex guarantees, compared to natural gas pricing guarantees, which I don't think exist. and then we're also then satisfying TGS and other requirements. there's a real opportunity here, but there's three layers. To a feasibility study, and I think everybody's very familiar with the first two and the first one being technical. We have to make sure things work and that we are respecting the laws of physics. but then there's the second one, which is financial because there's maybe a couple dozen things that abide by the laws of physics, but there's really a short list that make financial sense. But then there's this third layer, which I just call people, and so us individuals on this, call right now. We sometimes take for granted that we live and work in this space five days a week. there's a whole plethora of people out there that are just learning what a geo exchange system is and that there are alternatives to business as usual, and they have very positively reinforced purchasing patterns and procedures and policies and standard operating procedures that really reinforce the business as usual. when they're presented with some very attractive business propositions. so it's not just Hey, the wave is coming and everybody is pivoting to geo, next week it is. and the numbers, although positive, you need more than numbers in our experience.

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 17:27

you need the buy-in of all the stakeholders. And I can attest to a recent, situation we had on one of the jobs that Embridge was surprised how. and the same project that David and I were talking about, Enbridge was surprised on how low our gas consumption was. And it's taken them about a year to figure out how give to actually give us a service because they have never done that for this size of a building, which has been an interesting challenge to have. I want to go back to the toolbox and I'm gonna ask you have a very, for a very brief and crash course within five minutes of what are the elements of the toolbox. And I'm gonna, also ask people who haven't listened, go to our episode three. We did an episode with Kara Load from Ham and Jaffe, and she did a very good job, I think, of explaining how, in depth the heat exchange and the geo exchange or versus geothermal. So maybe we start with that geo geothermal and geo exchange

squadcaster-bcj0_1_09-08-2025_160626 18:22

Sure. So geothermal is the category. geo

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 18:27

geo.

squadcaster-bcj0_1_09-08-2025_160626 18:27

let's say, is a flavor of geothermal at the ice cream parlor of. Geothermal technologies, geo exchange. We're drilling down anywhere between 300, which we would consider a very shallow type of borehole. And by the way, we're vertically drilling. We're, and anywhere up to a thousand feet, we've done a couple thousand footers, but a lot

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 18:47

Right.

squadcaster-bcj0_1_09-08-2025_160626 18:47

around six to 800 feet. this is in the geothermal category, shallow, believe it or not. so is typically considered a true source of energy where we're now drilling significantly longer distances. we're measuring now in, kilometers as opposed or feet. And we are accessing a truly self-renewing thermal resource. So we don't have to do anything to just continuously get heat outta that resource. Unfortunately, here in Southern Ontario and frankly Ontario, my geologist friends call it old and cold. So we have to go very deep. in order to access that type of, geothermal resource. Geo exchange is similar in that we are drilling vertically, but it's a very different animal in that it's not a true source. and so what I mean by that is every megawatt hour of heat we pull outta the ground and heat pump into the building, we effectively have to put back in the ground at the end of the year. And, in our renewables 1 0 1 course, which we have, a YouTube video on Shameless plug,

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 19:53

All good.

squadcaster-bcj0_1_09-08-2025_160626 19:54

we try and explain that there, there is no such thing as cooling in the world of thermodynamics and physics, cooling. It sounds really argumentative and annoying. It's really the absence of heat. Sounds I'm the least popular guy at the party when I bring this one out. so what we're doing though to recharge that system, 'cause let's say we just went through a nice cold winter and we took all the heat outta that bedrock beneath the building or, into the building. how do we get the heat back in, especially for not combusting fossil fuels to do that? we do that by cooling the building. So again, we're not actually cooling the building, we're removing the heat from the building, and instead of blowing that out a cooling tower on the roof, we just push it back into the geo exchange system. And so when we're modeling and designing, whether we're in the feasibility stage or full detailed design stage for a geo system, that's literally what my team of experts are doing is we're trying to figure out what is the optimum size of this bore field that enables it while it's being operated. Not just this year, not just next year, but for the next 30 to 50 years. How do we keep that system relatively in balance in terms of heat out versus heat in while satisfying the needs of that building, essentially?

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 21:07

Okay. So in for my simple mind and trying to keep things at a layman level, I think that's very similar to how you balance your checkbook. You basically have to put something in and then you take it out. If you don't put it in, you can't take it out on, you're gonna have issues. So is that a fair assessment of the situation?

squadcaster-bcj0_1_09-08-2025_160626 21:24

One, 100%. and we can push that analogy a little bit further. You can get a credit card and borrow on credit, but at some point you gotta put it all back as well, right? So like

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 21:33

Yeah.

squadcaster-bcj0_1_09-08-2025_160626 21:33

the limits of that val, like that's not like a black and white rule. but typically we're finding the market, unless you have an energy as a service provider, that's a higher operator, a skillset in order to push the technical capabilities of a bore field beyond that kind of in and out balancing act. But you can do some really fancy things. and I love owners that let us do that. 'cause we have the ability to do it, but the vast majority, just to keep it simple, we're keeping these things, as balanced as possible.

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 22:02

Perfect. I know you have, looked in and you Ben, briefly mentioned the biomass situation. Can you just give a brief introduction to biomass, what it is? Does it make sense? Does it ever make sense in Toronto

squadcaster-bcj0_1_09-08-2025_160626 22:15

it's not gonna make

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 22:16

Sense?

squadcaster-bcj0_1_09-08-2025_160626 22:16

the single building scale. and because biomass really likes scale, we're not gonna be trucking biomass to individual buildings. like the good old days where the milkman delivered milk door to

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 22:27

Right.

squadcaster-bcj0_1_09-08-2025_160626 22:27

we're not gonna be doing that. Where biomass makes a ton of sense is at the community plus scale. So we're talking now district energy systems with large central plants. but, what biomass is though is essentially the leftovers. From the lumber industry, the construction industry, from many preventative fire, maintenance in the forest there, there's a lot of woody like stuff that comes outta the forest that you can't turn into dimensional lumber like two by fours and two by sixes, and you can't turn into really cool things like glue lamb beams and CLT panels, because that's, I think, has a very strong future. Not to digress, but, mass timber construction. But I think what a lot of people forget is that trees don't grow in rectangles. if, and because I'm a big fan of sequestering carbon in the physical construction of our buildings, but we'd also need to have a place to then put all the leftovers. and we used to put the leftovers of that industry into the pulp and paper industry, who, and their biggest customer was the newspaper industry. And then this thing called the internet got invented. I think you've heard of it.

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 23:31

Yeah.

squadcaster-bcj0_1_09-08-2025_160626 23:32

and it completely decimated the newspaper industry. And that dried up all of that market. And now, unfortunately, a lot of these residues, what they call 'em, which is like the branches, the bark, the chips and the dust that comes off of the manufacturing of dimensional lumber gets landfill. there's just nowhere to sell it. No one's buying it at the volume that it's being produced. this is a whole other discussion for

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 23:56

Okay.

squadcaster-bcj0_1_09-08-2025_160626 23:56

like

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 23:57

I was just gonna say, you and I probably can talk about that, for four hours. I've been fortunate enough to be involved in the Stenberg project for the past two and a half years. We're on, seven eighth floor right now, and it's a lot of fun and holds a lot of promise. There's a lot of obstacle to getting it right and getting it in scale. I still think, but you're right. We could talk about that for hours. I want to go back to David and I want to ask you, like right now, we talked about a couple of tools in the toolbox. Couple of, I guess if you think about the heat pump and the geothermal or geo exchange being, a tool for the mic micro level and based on what I just learned, the biomass being a macro level tool, if you may, at least on a larger scale. What does C think about that? Do you, I know on the micro level we have the TGS, we have the electronic green standards, and we have a whole bunch of things going on there. Does Citi have any macro level plans?

squadcaster-0cfh_1_09-08-2025_160627 24:56

Yeah, I would say we do, I think our, the biggest thing that municipalities can do, so we do have some incentives. Those are mostly micro level. They're open to, developers, owners, et cetera. the biggest lever we have is probably around For now is regulation. and so you mentioned the TGS, we are working as well on, simple terms, an equivalent of the TGS for existing buildings, because frankly municipalities don't have the deep pockets, to offer, the kind of rich incentives that can really move the market. I think one thing we can do is regulate and we do that, and I'll get into that, but we can also lead by example. we do have a bit of a pulpit, where we can showcase through our own projects, our own infrastructure, best practice, right? and we do a lot of that as well. And if you do enough of that, that alone can help to move the market. But those things combined are not enough. We also have to, way I it is simply enable, so not to give the impression that we're in the way, but we own and control a lot of what developers, whether they're real estate, energy developers, will need to be able to meet the goals that we set. And so it's within our shop. But the reason I mention it is because it's not so simple to say. Of course, we set the rules now we, we make the projects happen. These are very different departments that. actually give me a lot of work. meaning a lot of my job is to connect these different departments to make sure that, they are able to be a sort of a solution provider to some of these things that a developer might need to do. And one of the most obvious examples right now are wastewater energy projects. We own the wastewater infrastructure. we, Toronto Water is the utility. In that case, we set the requirement for buildings to decarbonize and here's a source of energy that, we will have to be able to provide. Companies, other energies or service companies, access to, so they can use it to decarbonize those buildings. so it's great because it means, we get to work, it's us in Toronto Water, other divisions, these private energy companies, and it's a great public private collaboration. But, it's very difficult because the systems we have in place, the policy systems, not the technical ones, the policy, it doesn't enable that directly. These are new uses of old infrastructure that we have to, create the case for. And so we're doing that. point is, that's only a thing that municipalities really can do.

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 27:17

Right.

squadcaster-0cfh_1_09-08-2025_160627 27:17

And so a lot of what I try to do with my team besides the other two, is really to enable those types of big solutions. You mentioned the Macrons wastewater district energy, those are big macro solutions that can decarbonize millions of square feet at a time. And so that's I think, the biggest tool that we have.

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 27:33

that's basically aggregating the effects and putting it together, creating synergy, John.

squadcaster-0cfh_1_09-08-2025_160627 27:38

That's right.

squadcaster-bcj0_1_09-08-2025_160626 27:39

yeah, and just you want to caveat all the things I was saying before. I was talking about to be specific new construction when I said seven outta 10 buildings, we're talking new. But the elephant in the room that I think, a lot of Canadians and GTA AERs don't know, is that across Canada, we have 1.4 million buildings that already exist. So trying to get these winds in the new construction is absolutely imperative, but the elephant is gonna be what do we do with all the existing, and unfortunately, the business case is not as attractive to go retrofit, one of those buildings with a geo exchange system. And frankly, any other system, or else it would be happening much faster.

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 28:15

that's a very good point. At the end of the day when you have, very large sinkholes basically in this whole platform, then you that one, one of the things to think about is to how to patch them up and not have that much energy go to waste. I wanna go David, again. David, I want to ask you the controversial question. I know you and I have talked about this offline, is TGS making buildings more expensive?

squadcaster-0cfh_1_09-08-2025_160627 28:41

in the short term and for the developer? Yes. in the long term, as John alluded to, there are lifecycle savings to be had. I think what's important first, though, before getting into that, is the TGS is, is a multitude of elements that comprise the green standard, right? a small portion of that is, is energy and carbon targets. a lot of the TGS is not that. So there's things like, bike parking and bird friendly glass and, water management. All good things that are within the environmental sort of realm. But the part that I focused on was on energy and carbon and with our latest study, the net zero transition study, which is essentially looking at how do we go from current version four to version five and six, getting to essentially near zero emissions buildings. that study shows that the capital cost premium for, that based on the archetypes that we've designed is somewhere in the realm of, less than 1%, up to about 2% capital. Part of that is because the current baseline, Ben talked about BAU, the current version four baseline is quite high. It's quite a high performing building. And our data of current application shows that already you pretty much have to feel switch to meet that target. you don't have to, but it's the most cost effective way to meet the targets. And so that's a good thing. But my point is that it's already a very good performing building. so it's a small difference to get to a best performing building. but there still is a cost premium, particularly on the building envelope side. it's just the reality is like it's, that's the more expensive part and there's no business model yet, as there is energy as a service, there is no envelope as a service, if you wanna put it that way. It doesn't exist. And so that can be a challenge. There are solutions to that, but, but I'll just emphasize that. For the right business model. so exactly what Ben does with energy as a service that creates that long term view or what it, in another sense, it removes, that split that principle agent problem from a, let's say a condo developer, right? You don't have to care about the long term anymore because, Ben's coming in and providing the capital, right? and then the condo board will deal with the long-term agreement. the case of rental buildings, we see uptake of a lot of these solutions already because they have that long-term view. And so that's why I know that, I'm not too concerned that, there won't be desire for these solutions. it's for those ones that are concerned very much about the upfront, which is very much the case today because it's so hard to develop right now. And

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 31:04

Yeah.

squadcaster-0cfh_1_09-08-2025_160627 31:04

we need solu. I'm not ignoring the cost premium despite the fact that I, it is small relative to the other costs. It's still an added cost at a time when it's very difficult to add. To take any more costs. So we have to be conscious of that. and that's where I think there are solutions. we need the opportunity just to collaborate, to find those.

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 31:23

I wanna go to Ben, but just before I go there, I want to say I, I fully agree with what you said, especially given the environment and, the situation and the market that we are in. I can f. Readily feel and see in the developer's mindset how it has changed over the past few years. When we were working on a ton of condos, a lot of thinking was shorter term horizon. And I don't wanna necessarily blame the developers because that was the business model. Regardless of how you build and how good you want to build, at certain point in time you have to transition out. You have to hand it over to someone else. And like it or not, the performance audit from Teon is gonna come back And they will try and pick everything apart. And you will try and, as a developer, you will try and limit the amount of items that you potentially have exposure and risk, in the long term. So those are, that's some of the risk. Decisions that were made you based on minimizing the downside. Whereas when you're doing, a purpose-built rental project and you know you're gonna hold onto it for a long time, it's less about the downside and it's more about the long-term upside. So I think that's where, to your point, the more of these developers are open to the idea of, okay, you know what, that better envelope, that better, energy system will help me over time.

squadcaster-0cfh_1_09-08-2025_160627 32:42

And we've done some things, like I did say, we don't have the deep pockets for cash incentives, so let's say financial incentives, but we do have non-financial tools at our disposal, not a lot of them, but, one that we've taken advantage of is when it comes to geo exchange, specifically by, shrinking or, eliminating a lot of the equipment that would otherwise exist, a lot of which would be in the penthouse. you now freed up this space that's actually quite valuable. So with city planning support, we now allow developers who are pursuing geo exchange. we don't say get rid of the mechanical penthouse. We say keep it, but use it for something that you get more value out of, which typically would be, units of course, or. Amenity space, if that's what you want. We, on some of our buildings where we've done, we've been directly involved in district energy projects, at Hotel X, it created a beautiful swanky rooftop that I was at a friend's wedding there. and it's great, but that wouldn't have existed if it had the typical rooftop equipment. So like there are value streams that you can unlock by doing these things. But again, just to bring it back to my point, that we had to do the work with city planning to acknowledge, that this is not standard and it required, some rethinking sort of the typical site specific zoning bylaw amendment. we, I wouldn't say we're at citywide changes yet through the parent bylaw, but now planners are armed with, the knowledge that there's a way to have our cake and eat it too at the building application level. And so there's all kinds of that, things like that, that we can do these non-financial incentives to

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 34:10

Right.

squadcaster-0cfh_1_09-08-2025_160627 34:10

the playing field between the business as usual and the alternative.

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 34:14

I am very happy you said that it has come up on this podcast a few times that an extra floor on a building will solve a whole bunch of problems. So that's definitely a good way to go. Ben, I wanna go to you and I want to talk and I wanna start digging into that toolbox. So we did touch quite a bit on the geothermal right now and the geo exchange, and I'm gonna ask John to chime in where needed, but walk us through the other tools in the toolbox and if possible, and maybe even if we, if you wanna go back to the geothermal, how do I know my project is a slam dunk for any of those tools? in other words, if I am doing a small multiplex, which is very popular these days, I'm doing a five unit, is am I even thinking about geothermal or am I just, should I just stick with heat pumps and don't bother and take that and go forward? Six stories, eight stories, 15 stories, 150 units. Just maybe walk us through that. That would be, I think that would be very valuable to our audience.

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 35:12

For sure.

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 35:13

Sure. Yeah.

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 35:14

an important thing, there's no one size fits all. I think that's the first overriding statement. first thing you have to do is objectively look at, your building or your project. Think about what are your design objectives as the developer. Think about what are the site constraints, site opportunities. the, the municipal environment and David's realm, on the energy side as well as the planning sides. what's your built form gonna look like? Are you pursuing certifications or designations over and above what's required building code? Are you looking for lead or energy, star, things like this. So there are a lot of sort of factors, so a lot of people just say, Hey, should I do geothermal? Doesn't make sense. And the answer is always, it depends, all these things are iterative, right? I guess we could speak to some rules of thumb here.

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 35:56

something that's interesting. So

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 35:58

There's kind

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 35:59

there's kind of two, maybe kind of

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 36:00

paths to decarbonizing, at least

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 36:02

at least the gsg emissions for

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 36:04

energy generation on site

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 36:05

city. One would be

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 36:06

a ground source

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 36:07

source heat pump solution,

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 36:08

geothermal, what we're

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 36:09

and

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 36:10

about. other

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 36:11

the other is an air source heat pump.

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 36:13

which is, I'll leave it to John to explain in further detail, here.

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 36:17

here, but basically you

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 36:19

using

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 36:19

are using the grounds

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 36:20

to

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 36:20

to exchange the,

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 36:21

thermal energy for heating or cooling mode or using the air around it. And those

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 36:25

those are two really viable options for any.

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 36:28

to look at. if you look at

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 36:31

you look at people's houses like,

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 36:32

a lot of

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 36:32

a lot of trending

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 36:33

days is people get off the gas

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 36:35

gas,

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 36:35

own house and they put an air

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 36:36

air source heat, pump outside

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 36:38

heats

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 36:38

heat, and

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 36:39

Interestingly, even in Canada, do

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 36:41

you do this commercial

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 36:42

or

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 36:43

buildings

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 36:43

buildings. The air

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 36:45

air source

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 36:46

pumps we

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 36:46

pump. We usually.

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 36:47

for, call it small to,

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 36:49

Call it

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 36:50

call it even

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 36:50

even mid midsize buildings

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 36:52

Just

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 36:53

just because the CapEx is lower front.

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 36:56

but it

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 36:56

but it does,

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 36:57

here, maybe

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 36:57

maybe trade this off. Ground source heat pump, the CapEx is higher front.

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 37:01

you have to

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 37:01

You have to

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 37:01

holes

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 37:02

holes way

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 37:02

ground,

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 37:03

to the ground, like John said.

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 37:04

but the

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 37:04

but the

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 37:05

is lower over time. Air

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 37:07

air source heat pumps are the inverse.

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 37:10

CapEx is

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 37:11

is cheaper,

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 37:12

but

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 37:12

but opex very likely will be higher over time. Why?

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 37:15

the

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 37:16

Because the input commodity for that is electricity.

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 37:18

And

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 37:18

And I'm not sure if anyone sees scenario electricity will get cheaper in the

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 37:22

as we electrify our economy. So this is the trade

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 37:25

trade off.

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 37:25

we've found in, in, in sort of our studies

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 37:27

Cities project

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 37:29

smaller

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 37:29

smaller projects

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 37:30

heat pump is often just the way to go because, the, the economics call for it. if you can get over 80,000 feet, certainly over a hundred thousand feet, geothermal starts to hit economies of scale. once you start

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 37:43

You start getting into point

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 37:44

tall

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 37:45

hall, mid rise, certainly point

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 37:46

tech, space, it gets

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 37:48

gets better and

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 37:49

I'll just speak

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 37:49

I'll speak again to the financial end,

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 37:51

this over to John, but

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 37:52

but

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 37:52

find,

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 37:53

find,

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 37:53

about

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 37:54

about like, um,

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 37:55

anything

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 37:55

anything in, in life,

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 37:56

geothermal is

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 37:57

subject

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 37:58

of scale and

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 38:00

drillers who

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 38:01

in the ground for

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 38:02

geothermal

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 38:03

think of it as a number of borehole per

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 38:05

per,

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 38:06

And again,

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 38:07

just like anything you need to mobilize very specialized equipment

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 38:10

a

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 38:10

to site.

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 38:11

Drill holes in a very

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 38:12

Very

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 38:12

specific way, run

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 38:14

same run the loops

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 38:15

goes with

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 38:15

goes with it.

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 38:16

then

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 38:16

And T-Mobile,

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 38:17

if you're doing

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 38:17

you're doing that for five, four,

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 38:19

or a hundred bore holes, I think we know that the average

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 38:22

average four hole

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 38:23

will decrease significantly over that time. So this is the comment of north of a hundred thousand feet, or call it 80 to 90 to a hundred units. Geothermal really starts to

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 38:32

starts to hit

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 38:33

because you get those economies of

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 38:34

scale. Scale really,

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 38:36

which,

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 38:36

you know, just.

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 38:37

give you a little bit of peek behind the curtain on the proformas, 70 to 80% of

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 38:42

To 80% of the overall

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 38:43

can be the drilling

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 38:45

drilling.

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 38:45

of our proforma. So it, it all

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 38:47

It all comes down to the drilling. Smaller projects, very expensive

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 38:51

Large

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 38:51

for projects,

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 38:52

per hole. Really should look at geothermal under that, range. start looking at air source would be our view. But John, over to you.

squadcaster-bcj0_1_09-08-2025_160626 39:00

Yeah, no, that, that aligns completely with our data that we've accrued over the last few years, studying these and all the other various options. the one I think case that I think, although it aligns with the logic, defies the square footage rule of thumb, is we can do economies of scale. If you are getting the driller to go to site to do, 300 single family homes as the site. we're getting those types of economies of scale from a drill rig perspective, but we don't need the density to be on a per lot basis. we're now looking at the entire community as that lot. But that is not the average development. So it's not going to be the bread and butter business as usual of the future that it is going to be, when that makes financial sense. And that's really what it all comes down to. I think most people would absolutely love to be doing all of these things, but as soon as they see the price tag of them, it's really gonna come down to, does this make financial sense? And it's not just for self-interest. Like a lot of these decisions are made on the backs of, we have investors and we have shareholders, and we have other stakeholders in here. It's not just about me in, in, in my profits, it's a much more complicated. Situation, you're spending other people's money when these

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 40:12

Right.

squadcaster-bcj0_1_09-08-2025_160626 40:12

are being made, right? but yeah, the economy scale makes sense. The other rule of thumb is if you're looking at a district, a lot of the district utilities don't look at anything sub 1 million square feet. So if, but with the exact same logic, they need even more scale to make those investments. That make

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 40:26

Sorry, can you just maybe define what's districts like? Just we haven't, we didn't define that one.

squadcaster-bcj0_1_09-08-2025_160626 40:31

sure. Okay. So district energy is, and my district energy colleagues are gonna cringe, but it's really useful. Think of district energy, like the electrical grid. it, it moves energy. The difference is the electrical grid with poles and wires is moving electrical energy and district energy, instead of poles and wires, is pipes buried in the ground and we're moving thermal energy. And the medium that's being pumped around in these pipes is literally just water. Water is a phenomenal carrier. Of heat energy. It's literally a thousand times more effective at moving heat than air is. So another advantage to a ground source heat pump versus an air source heat pump is that we're able to move less things and, but move a ton more energy as a result of it. and this allows you to heat entire cities with this type of infrastructure. That's how energy dense water, is and can provide us these abilities. So if we look at our Scandinavian allies, the country of Denmark, which is, no offense, Danes, but you're basically the GTA, but like 80% of buildings are connected to district energy systems over they have whole generations of adults that don't know what a furnace is, for example,

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 41:46

Interesting.

squadcaster-bcj0_1_09-08-2025_160626 41:47

but yeah, so it's really about moving the energy around just like the grid doesn't generate the electricity, the power plants do. District energy doesn't generate the heat either. It's just moving it. But the cool thing about using water as your transportation medium is that water doesn't care what makes it hot. It will accept heat from any heat source that's hotter than itself. So you can put geo into it, you can put air source into it, you can put wastewater into it. You can put all these different types of energy sources into it that make the most economic sense, as long as the thermodynamics also make sense. and that's district energy. Now, the hardest thing with district energy though, 'cause you're like, if you're like me, when I first learned about district energy 11 years ago, when I started my career in this space, you'd be like, why are we not doing this?

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 42:35

I was just gonna say, why not?

squadcaster-bcj0_1_09-08-2025_160626 42:36

this makes so much sense. And ask your local politician to define what district energy is, and I bet you they'll have a really hard time with that. ask the average big investor. It, there's this massive. education gap, at the moment. And like I said, e even when you address that and you show them the numbers, it, it's like moving a mountain. And the hardest thing in district energy is to go from nothing to something. And that's where we are at a city province scale level, we have less than 1%, less than 1% market penetration compared to places like Sweden and Denmark, better, like 70, 80%. So we're basically zero. And no, I don't wanna diminish the accomplishments of our district energy utility friends, but when we're looking at the whole, we've cleaned up a couple of grains of sand on the beach, we really need to be thinking about and I think that's one of the things that us at Rothkos is that we came from. Scandinavian perspective, that's where I got trained. For example, I used to work for a Copenhagen headquartered engineering company that specialized in district energy. And and I used to do water wastewater infrastructure at the city scale in my first seven years of my engineering career. And so scale to me is very comfortable.

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 43:55

right.

squadcaster-bcj0_1_09-08-2025_160626 43:55

had to learn, how to modify that to think at a single building scale, when I started going into Geo, for example. but I'm noticing that our policies aren't really set up for scale. and a lot of our other programs, we have the FCM Green Municipal Fund, that is putting a lot of really good money into the feasibility work. But right now they're offering like $200,000 subsidies, to do feasibility studies for a single project. if you math that out at scale, if we say that every project requires a $200,000 feasibility study, and then you multiply that, we get into, are you kidding me? Numbers very quickly, we need to be thinking, you know how this

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 44:38

need the holistic approach, it looks like, rather than bottom up approach is what you're saying.

squadcaster-bcj0_1_09-08-2025_160626 44:43

and I think the carbon tax was an attempt at that, where it was holistic. It was not picking winners and losers to use a political phrase. It was just penalizing pollution across the board.

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 44:55

Yeah.

squadcaster-bcj0_1_09-08-2025_160626 44:55

a critical flaw in, in my opinion, and the critical flaw is that when you penalize the bad things, the idea is that you then allow the good things to be more cost effective, and then the market will start to buy the good things. The critical flaw is that the market to this day, still know what the good things are. don't know what district energy is. They're just learning what geo exchange. air source heat pump has really started to come into, a much more commonplace in the HVAC manufacturing and, installer world in the last couple years. So we were penalizing the bad, assuming that people would migrate towards the good, but no one knew where to go. so you were met with a tremendous amount of resistance of the, you're just making everything expensive, which is true. the idea was to make the quote unquote good things more competitive. But the average buyer doesn't even know what they are yet.

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 45:50

I would say the average developer or even more than average developer is probably not very clear on that.

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 45:54

if you don't mind, I might just jump in on here. I don't wanna throw any cold water on, the district energy discussion or lack of heat water. I don't know if I. Yeah, John, if I'm getting that right. But, John, John's

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 46:04

John's absolutely right. Of course. You

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 46:06

about district energy and what a wonderful way it's been executed in other markets. I think, actually, John, Dave and I have all had experience with district energy and execution and

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 46:15

implementation, and

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 46:16

and I would the

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 46:17

the technology is certainly one that's really exciting. Decarbonization and load sharing and all

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 46:22

that John's saying are like absolutely true. But, just

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 46:25

you, just for developers perspective, you knows.

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 46:27

the things to really keep in mind on the execution side is it does of course start with technology, but it ends with commercial and legal interest. And boy does it get

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 46:36

Does it get complicated quickly? when you're sharing energy between blocks

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 46:40

That are separately owned, you're now

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 46:42

owned, you're now dealing with different sort of off takers or purchasers of that energy.

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 46:46

You may

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 46:47

You may or may not be crossing municipal, right?

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 46:49

where David's

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 46:49

David's team

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 46:50

you know, and broader team may be

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 46:51

getting involved.

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 46:52

transportation

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 46:53

Services you, there's rights,

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 46:56

in

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 46:56

you know, and ownership and phasing and easements.

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 46:58

here's the other

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 46:59

There's the other big one, big

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 47:00

is

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 47:01

is phasing. I know

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 47:02

today we're

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 47:02

today we're talking about the building technologies and

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 47:05

I think one

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 47:06

one area where all

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 47:07

is

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 47:08

single buildings,

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 47:09

and shoot for

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 47:09

geo

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 47:10

It's just single building geothermal lights

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 47:13

lights out,

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 47:13

as long as you hit that

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 47:14

hit

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 47:14

it's the way to go. But, yeah, for interconnected

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 47:18

buildings. How do you know?

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 47:19

go? When do you invest in the energy infrastructure? What dollars go first? What dollars? Go second. When does that

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 47:24

Does that load become

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 47:25

What if there's the change

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 47:26

a change in schedule? And there's delays, it just,

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 47:28

not

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 47:28

again, not to throw the cold water,

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 47:30

the delivery of

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 47:31

of energy in a financially feasible

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 47:32

successful and

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 47:34

and executable way has to thread the needle.

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 47:36

like this is

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 47:37

like this

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 47:37

the

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 47:37

theme

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 47:38

chat

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 47:39

between sort of technical requirements, commercial requirements

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 47:42

legal requirements, and you

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 47:44

and you drop out

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 47:44

those

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 47:45

of those

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 47:45

and it doesn't work. and lot of front end

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 47:47

require.

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 47:48

are, should be put in place to just plan for these things and make sure it's a success.

squadcaster-0cfh_1_09-08-2025_160627 47:52

Payam. I just wanted to add, 'cause 'cause John brought up the Danish experience and Ben's mentioned the challenges. I know this isn't a District Energy podcast, but I just, it's important for, your listeners to understand that, in Denmark at least and many other places, thermal energy is regulated like how we would regulate electricity, whereas here it's not. And so it, that, that complexity that Ben is speaking to is in large part because there is no. Government led framework to scale up district energy. There's nobody who's watching over rates and who's saying, the sort of amortization periods you're allowed to have, and there's no essentially equivalent to Enbridge on the

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 48:29

Right.

squadcaster-0cfh_1_09-08-2025_160627 48:30

and so that just means that, to pull this off, you need several right things to kinda line up. And that's why you see it on the largest sites with the most sophisticated landowners where, they're working with the companies who do district energy. and in a place like Toronto, those opportunities exist. It's great. But in many places, like in order to see the scale we would want, it requires much more government led intervention, which I would say is probably on the horizon, at least if you look at the signals that the Ontario government is sending with the integrated energy plan. it's gonna take time. But, I think at least people are starting to realize that, if you want certain things, you actually have to, sometimes make it happen. Yeah.

squadcaster-bcj0_1_09-08-2025_160626 49:10

And I think it's also important, I'm, I know I'm talking about district energy, but for the people listening, I am nodding along to both what Ben, and everyone wants to say here. I agree with everybody. and that was what my earlier comment was about in the lack of leadership at the federal and provincial levels, that's really what I'm alluding to. these great systems internationally, existed because there was great leadership at the higher levels of government. but to the other point though, the getting things right at the capital allocation stage there, there's some numbers coming out and, 'cause there's a lot of talk about adding nukes to the grid here in Ontario, especially the SMRs, the small ones, and even MMRs, which are micro modular reactors. it's 0.1% additional capital cost to make that a combined heat and power plant, not just a power plant. to back to retrofit a nuclear power plant to be able to take the heat off is obviously considerably more expensive.

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 50:04

Interesting.

squadcaster-bcj0_1_09-08-2025_160626 50:04

And to give you a sense of magnitude on the heat generated versus electricity generated. Bruce nuclear power plant alone up on the Bruce Peninsula here it's generating electricity, creates excess of two to four x plus the amount of heat that is generating electricity just dumps it into like Huron as part of its cooling process. if we were to put that in a district energy system, it would decarbonize over two and a half Torontos.

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 50:32

Wow,

squadcaster-bcj0_1_09-08-2025_160626 50:33

So

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 50:34

that's some context,

squadcaster-bcj0_1_09-08-2025_160626 50:35

but to, to Ben's point a hundred percent like that is not going to happen on the back of a single developer who owns a single chunk of land at one address in downtown Toronto that's gonna take provincial and federal leadership with deep collaboration with the city of Toronto to pull that off. But from that first layer of feasibility, a technical layer, this is a slam dunk. this is being done in other jurisdictions that greater scales than what I just talked about. Like you think taking the heat out of Bruce to decarbonize all of Toronto is insane. places like Germany and China and Singapore are doing, and, the UAE are doing this at scales like five x this. we are just little babies and still scared of that type of scale here. But again, I don't think you're gonna find anybody at the provincial government right now that knows anything about thermal

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 51:24

So that actually gives me the perfect segue and, to try and wrap this up into a good ending because I'm sure I'm fascinated by this topic, and we could be sitting here for hours talking about this, I'm sure, and maybe we do that, some at a time. But I want to use that. And I wanna say, I'm going to put some context. We're here today at 2025. We have a vision for 24 D, and hopefully as we get closer to it, we have bigger visions and better visions for 2050s and sixties and onwards. And I'd like to ask a somewhat of a role playing question toward the end of this podcast from our guests. And, if I could. Get you five minutes to pitch a single idea or single request to help us move from where we are to that vision of 2040 with one of the heads of the three levels of government. Pick one. Either the mayor, which might be a little bit unfair for David or Doug Ford, or go to the RPM. first of all, which one would you pick and what would be that one pitch? I'll start with you, David.

squadcaster-0cfh_1_09-08-2025_160627 52:29

Okay. I can't pick the mayor 'cause yeah, I

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 52:31

She's just

squadcaster-0cfh_1_09-08-2025_160627 52:32

for that

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 52:32

next, next to you right now.

squadcaster-0cfh_1_09-08-2025_160627 52:34

Exactly. and so look, I think, at the provincial level, which. In my world, I think has the most important levers right now because, I won't digress too far, but I'll say that money is part of the issue, but it's not the biggest issue in my opinion. I think right now the biggest issue is, our codes and standards need to be more aggressive, for all the complaints about the Toronto Green Standard and the chaos at the municipal levels across the province, that we all have different approaches that can easily be solved by having a more aggressive building code for Ontario. And then, you know that complexity goes away. Yes, there's costs associated with that. It's not so easy, it's just changing things, but. You have to set a floor, right? One that everybody can understand. And to be fair, that floor hasn't moved in quite a long time at the provincial level. So I think there's a real opportunity to reinvigorate obesity,

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 53:25

Mm-hmm.

squadcaster-0cfh_1_09-08-2025_160627 53:26

do that in a way that, it doesn't have to mean exorbitant costs. it doesn't even have to be prescriptive. It just has to raise the bar for everybody equally. So it's an even playing field for developers. I think that's one of the most important things because we're technology agnostic as well. You want good outcomes and that's what codes do. there are prescriptive elements, but my preference make it performance based and say, here's what we're trying to do, which is to decarbonize and how you get there is your choice, but there are certain goals you need to meet. And I think on the energy side. I do think we need a lot of clarity around the role of natural gas, in the future energy mix at a provincial level. And they did some of that in the integrated energy plan. It wasn't quite detailed enough. I think I get the notion of the, all of the above approach. I understand where they're coming from, but I do think sometimes in the sense that they pick winners in the form of nuclear energy, sometimes you have to decide what is the future of these other things that are arguably the problem we're trying to solve. There comes a time when you can't have all of these things, and just leave it to the market to, to figure out. So I would say that, I think it's important to have a plan, but one that is also specific sometimes about where you're going to, be active and where you'll be more passive. And so that, that would be my, I think, my

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 54:40

So push the OBC and make sure your do's and don'ts are very clear. Thank you. Ben. Do you, who are you gonna pick from the three levels of government and what's your one pitch?

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 54:53

Yeah, similar

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 54:54

Yeah.

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 54:54

I'm definitely going provincial as well and mostly because most energy policy would be derived there, at least how it applies to things that happen in Ontario.

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 55:02

Yeah. I think, maybe just to supplement David's point there,

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 55:06

uh, would support the.

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 55:08

the

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 55:09

Enhanced deregulation and decentralization of

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 55:13

of,

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 55:13

procurement in Ontario. And what I

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 55:16

and what I mean by that.

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 55:17

energy has been a very centralized, you know, sort

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 55:22

Sort of

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 55:22

root ever

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 55:23

ever since really the growth

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 55:25

and sort of

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 55:26

and sort of

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 55:27

Um, you know, there's these natural

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 55:28

natural monopolies that grows and

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 55:30

to

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 55:31

supply energy, there's high

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 55:33

centralized utilities provide electricity. And

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 55:37

and that model

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 55:37

really

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 55:38

is really starting to dis

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 55:39

as the

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 55:40

the economy

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 55:42

as well as

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 55:43

carbon,

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 55:44

And, despite our government, I would say,

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 55:46

I would say,

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 55:46

moving as

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 55:47

as quickly as they can

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 55:48

new energy or allow

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 55:50

or allow alternative resources to supply.

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 55:52

a market. it's

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 55:54

It's incredible the

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 55:55

the, capital available and

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 55:58

and will to invest in infrastructure from the private sector

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 56:01

complement these objectives. And, if I think about what our role is at all Crest, it's, we are distributed energy resources, we are distributed

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 56:10

generation.

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 56:11

with traditional centralized generation, a nuke, and Bruce that feeds all of our power. let's flip that on its head and put, a smaller generation system right next to our building or whether that's solar or whatnot. I just

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 56:22

just from where we

ben-gilbank_1_09-08-2025_160626 56:23

lot of people and seen a lot of things and, there's a lot of goodwill and capital available out there right now, which would support this if the government is willing to create a framework for enhanced deregulation and, and, and decentralization of, energy resources. I think the private market would really step up.

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 56:41

Perfect. So give the private market a chance to prove itself and absorb the capital where it's more sufficient. That would be a very good use of that, Thank you very much. And John, please help us wrap this up. Who will you pick and what's your pitch?

squadcaster-bcj0_1_09-08-2025_160626 56:54

I think we're three through three. we're talking about energy and the energy is a provincial file. but I'm in the middle between David and Ben here with regards to, I think the public sector needs to set the rules of the game, so to speak, with regards to policy. but I think the power that's gonna get us to achieve results at scale is gonna come from private capital and that is only gonna be unleashed once the markets have the confidence to invest in these types of infrastructure, which is where the public policy comes in. if we have a strong leadership file on geo exchange or district energy, or all these types of systems where the private sector is confident that at the next election, that's not all gonna be thrown in the dumpster, you're gonna see billions of dollars that is currently sitting on the sidelines start to be deployed into these systems because the amount of phone calls that I get on a yearly basis. private capital as well as public capital saying, John, we want to invest in this type of technology. We want to invest in this type of infrastructure. It is astounding and I think they think I have a stack of like feasibility studies of projects ready to go, just waiting for a check and it's frankly the opposite. There. There's a amount of capital, there's a profound shortage. Of de-risked or projects that have gone through that feasibility study process. and another shameless plug, this is why we're building the overview platform, is to speed up and scale that feasibility work. 'cause if we're gonna be doing $200,000 studies, this doesn't make any sense at scale. So we need to bring the price down to be able to put accurate numbers in, to bring the confidence level up that investors need. But we're doing this in a very digital way as opposed to an analog way. Like we're done with spreadsheets, we're building things in code, and that allows us to have dynamic feasibility studies. So when the new legislation drops, when the new commodity prices are updated, et cetera, et cetera, we're updating things and it's now being pushed out to all of the, these active studies, at a push of a button essentially. So we're at the beginning of being able to deploy this technology into the market. But I think if we can put that type of. through analysis in the hands of the public sector to inform policy and in front of the private sector to, to give them confidence to invest. I think that we're gonna be able to create something that, that is, is profound at a scale that's actually gonna make an impact. 'cause if we want to do 1.4 million buildings down to net zero emissions by, 2050, not even 2040, we're looking at over 55,000 complete net zero retrofits annually for the next 20, 40 years.

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 59:33

That's a very big number. That's a very big number, but that's, that's definitely a goal to shoot for and if we fall short a little bit, that still is better than not shooting for it.

squadcaster-bcj0_1_09-08-2025_160626 59:43

that, there'll be a massive accomplishment. but that's where our sites are set.

payam_1_09-08-2025_160625 59:47

Thank you very much. I appreciate all of you, all of your time. Thank you for being here. This was very informative and we'll put information about your contact and your, companies on the show notes and people can listen to it. Thank you very much everyone.

squadcaster-bcj0_1_09-08-2025_160626 1:00:02

Thank you.

squadcaster-0cfh_1_09-08-2025_160627 1:00:03

Thanks.