Power Struggle
Improving the energy dialogue in Canada (and beyond) through honest, non-partisan, and fact- based conversations.
The energy conversation is personal: it’s in our homes, in our hands, and now, it’s in our ears. Power Struggle invites you to listen in on honest, non-partisan, and fact-based conversations between host Stewart Muir and the leaders and thinkers designing modern energy.
Watch videos at https://www.youtube.com/@PowerStrugglePod
Power Struggle
Electric vehicles are the future — but the road to get there isn’t smooth.
In this revealing episode of Power Struggle, host Stewart Muir sits down with Barry Penner, former Attorney General of British Columbia and Chair of the Energy Futures Institute, to examine the growing gap between EV policy and real-world implementation.
British Columbia has some of the most ambitious electric vehicle mandates in North America aiming to phase out the sale of internal combustion engines by 2035. But beneath the headlines, serious challenges are emerging: Not enough EVs on lots
- Charging access in condos and rural areas
- Power grid pressure and infrastructure lag
- Rising costs for used vehicles
- Regulatory speed bumps for consumers and industry
With decades of political and legal experience, Penner outlines what’s working, what isn’t, and what needs to change fast to make the energy transition fair, functional, and future-proof.
Whether you drive electric, gas, or don’t drive at all, this is a critical conversation about what sustainable transportation really requires.
🎙️ A new season of Power Struggle begins, with new voices, bold questions, and Canada’s energy future in focus.
The energy conversation is polarizing. But the reality is multidimensional. Get the full story with host Stewart Muir.
Reach out to us with thoughts, questions, or ideas at info@powerstruggle.ca
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And right now, there's limited electrical capacity at the local level. Never mind generating it where we're going to generate the electricity. Another question that energy futures have looked into. But once you get those electrons from wherever they're generated, how do you get them into your apartment building and to your parking stall and then into your vehicle? That's not as easy as it sounds like that.
SPEAKER_00:Hi, I'm Stuart Muir. This is the Power Struggle Podcast. We look at all things energy here. And I am back with the new season. Really excited. We've got this great new set. We've got some plans that are going to reach many more people with the cool conversations we're having on the topic of energy, how people get it, how we use it, what we're going to do in the future. And my guest today is Barry Penner. He's the chair of the Energy Futures Institute. And he's got a new study he's going to tell us about on the topic of electric vehicles and some issues around them in the province of British Columbia, Canada. Barry, it's great to see you. Good to be here. So, Barry, you've been out at the car dealer in Coquitlam today. What what's the deal?
SPEAKER_01:Well, uh got a chance to visit uh destination Toyota. Uh-huh. And yes, took a look at what they have on their lot and what they don't have on their lot. Right. And what they don't have a lot of are the most popular vehicles, which include the uh Toyota RAV 4, including the hybrid version. Uh there's a long waiting list to get one. So they don't have either the regular gasoline one or the hybrid one. Uh all I saw was they searched the lower mainland and they were able to produce two uh because we're doing a bit of a media event today, uh, using that as a backdrop to talk about the latest public opinion poll that Energy Futures commissioned. We uh turned to Ipsos, uh world-known Ipsos the polsters. Yes, they're world-known. Uh I think they're headquartered in France, but they're active in Canada and here in British Columbia. Right. So last year we commissioned them to do a survey of attitudes in British Columbia towards various energy policy options. And we thought it was time to go back in the field and do an update. And what we found is that support for the electric vehicle mandates, and British Columbia have us have the most aggressive ones in North America, uh, has dropped. Uh there's a continuing downward trend. There was already a majority opposition to them last year. That opposition has grown. And the intensity of those who are opposed has also grown. So we're now seeing that uh in terms of those who strongly oppose electric vehicle mandates, uh, is the number of those people is three and a half times greater than those who strongly support them. Um, and yet they're still in place, and they're starting to cause real impact to the marketplace and for consumers' choice.
SPEAKER_00:Now you say the electric vehicle mandates, that is to say, the regulations powered by law that compel motorists or people who are buying motor vehicles to do certain things. Um I just want to get an idea of what that is. Also, you said that is the most strict in all of North America. And I just wonder how it compares as well with the world overall in terms of this impetus to decarbonize road transportation by forcing people to buy EVs, giving them no choice but to buy EVs. That's really the setting, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01:That's one way to describe it. Yes, it's uh the government coming in, putting their hand into the marketplace and tipping the scales. Uh other countries have done it via incentives, tax discounts if you buy electric vehicles, and higher taxes on non-electric cars. I'm thinking of Norway, for example. Um, but uh very few countries have actually come in with a strict mandate so far and said this is what you must buy. But that's the approach we're taking in Canada and specifically and even more so here in British Columbia.
SPEAKER_00:And just in a nutshell, what are the mandates? What are the years they kick in, and what do they compel buyers to do? So they are starting to bite right now. Uh, and so that'll be a surprise for many people watching. And now is August uh 2025, so getting towards the end of 2025 into 2026.
SPEAKER_01:So, what happens around this time of year is the 2026 models start arriving. Right, of course. Summer. You don't summer when you see next year's car. The next year's cars are coming. And so the government has indicated that their requirements will apply to the model year. It's not the calendar year, it's the model year, 2026 model year, and those cars are now arriving, or in some cases, not arriving in the same quantity they would, because the manufacturers do not want to be hit with a$20,000 fine per vehicle that exceeds the allowed quota of non-electric cars. And so in British Columbia, they have to sell 26% electric cars or by offsetting credits from some other manufacturer who has more than they need, i.e., sells more electric cars than 26%. Well, guess who that is? That's Tesla. So one way to comply is to purchase credits from Tesla if you're Ford or Chrysler or Honda or GM. Um, or you pay the$20,000 penalty per car to the BC government. Or you just withhold the non-electric cars from the market so that the overall balance of vehicles you're selling, you're selling enough of the electrics to you know to hit the 26% requirement.
SPEAKER_00:So what's the most popular car in Canada right now? I think it's the RAV4. The RAV4, the electric version or the hybrid version?
SPEAKER_01:They make uh up until the end of this year, they will be making a gas-only version and a hybrid version in Cambridge, Ontario. Right. Starting 2026, it'll only come as a hybrid. Okay, so there's no electric, not at all electric uh RAV4. It's not available in the marketplace. There is a plug-in hybrid uh version. You can go about 45 kilometers or so. Right. Uh am I right? No, 68 kilometers on a charge before the gasoline engine kicks in. And so you have the option to operate in electric mode for around town. Longer distances, the gasoline engine will kick in. So you don't have to worry about charging. That car is made in Japan only. Right. Um but the car that's selling the most is this vehicle made in Cambridge, Ontario. In fact, Canada's exporting the majority of the production in Canada gets exported to the United States. So the number one selling passenger vehicle in the United States is the RAV 4, made by Toyota, and it's made in Canada.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, so so Barry, you went out, you found there was a hybrid RAV4, one of the most popular cars on the market. You could go check it out. But would the consumer here be able to buy that car under these new regulations to green up the road transportation fleet?
SPEAKER_01:That's the kicker. They're already difficult to get because they're so popular. The plant's running at full tilt right now to meet consumer demand. This is a vehicle consumers find useful for them. That's five passengers. You can put lots of cargo in. It's great for going to soccer practice or hockey or skiing or whatever. Um, so it's selling. But under the electric vehicle mandates, both federal and provincial, uh, hybrid vehicles don't count. And so this vehicle, even though it's made in Canada and it's hybrid and it gets a very good fuel economy, uh, will attract that potentially a$20,000 penalty per car, or Toyota will be forced to buy offsets credits from other car companies, Tesla. So will that in order to be able to sell this car to you?
SPEAKER_00:So are they just going to eat the$20,000 at the dealership or are they going to pass it on to the customer? I mean, presumably the latter.
SPEAKER_01:The regulation is aimed at the manufacturer, right? Now, will they try to pass it on to their franchise operator? Unlikely, there's not enough profit margin to do that, right? They'd be selling at a loss. In fact, on the electric side, they already are selling at a loss. And if you look at Ford, uh every quarter, they say they're losing about a billion dollars uh every quarter for their electric vehicle division. Uh they're selling your EVs currently at a loss. So now to tell them to that you're gonna have to now sell your gasoline cars at a loss by paying a$20,000 fine, they can't afford to do that. So uh what I'm hearing is manufacturers will just withhold uh new product from BC. We won't get as much as we would have uh because you're gonna try and tip the scale. So they're only selling uh 74% non-electric. Okay, so 26% electric.
SPEAKER_00:So are these lots just going to be empty of cars because they can't get anything?
SPEAKER_01:I'm wondering if we might be going back to what it was like during COVID. Remember, there's the major supply chain disruptions, and car lots got depleted very quickly. Right. And what happened is people then were forced to turn back to the used car market. And we saw prices get driven up in the used car market. And if you step back and look at it from a sociological perspective, it disproportionately impacts lower income people who rarely are able to purchase a brand new car, but they purchase vehicles in the used car market. Well, now we have government policy in effect driving up the price of used cars.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. I I've got to think that uh this wasn't thought through fully, or something has changed since those rules were brought in. What's going on? Because I I don't think there would be any sensible person who would who would want to cause this effect, is there?
SPEAKER_01:I think what's happened is the consumer uptake of electric cars has slowed. It's not met the trajectory that the central planners and government were assuming that it would take off because everyone would want to.
SPEAKER_00:Trevor Burrus, they kind of drew a straight line. And they had uh they had uh incentives, right? They had rebates and correct things like that. So that was maybe we saw uh a lot of talk, a lot of excitement about the fact you could get a rebate if you bought NAV. I remember uh when people were lining up around the block for uh Teslas when they were offering that.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, there was a time when the federal government offered you up to$5,000 rebate off the price of an electric vehicle. And provinces like Quebec and BC were kind of competing with each other to see who could offer up most generous rebates provincially, and you could add that on top of stack it on top of the federal rebate. So in Quebec, people were getting, I think, up to$7,500 from the province,$5,000 from the federal government. All of a sudden you're talking$12,500. Uh that made a big difference. Right. Uh however, uh Quebec put a freeze on their program over Christmas and they're gradually scaling down their provincial rebates. They revive them now, but it'll reduce the amount. And they projected that within a year or so it'll be phased out completely, maybe two years. Uh, but in BC, they just stopped abruptly in May. So the$4,000 the province was offering uh evaporated in May of this year. And the federal$5,000 rebate ran out of money in the middle of January with only about two days' notice, uh, leaving uh some dealers in an awkward position where on the Friday they talked to their customers and said, Come in Monday to complete the purchase of your new vehicle and you'll get this$5,000 off, only to have to tell them on the Monday, I need another$5,000 from you. Yeah. Because the federal rebate just dried up and has not yet been refunded.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, so Barry, how come everyone's not driving an EV? Is it partly maybe the subsidies aren't there? But what else is going on that the central planners of government have been disappointed? Well, that maybe they're disappointed, maybe maybe they're not. I don't know.
SPEAKER_01:Well, uh clearly there was this expectation that we saw an early uptick in EV sales, and some people in government and and maybe certain environmental groups just drew a dotted line project right into the future, extrapolate.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Well, life doesn't often run on a straight line. And the early adopters, the people who like new technology and had the f financial wherewithal to go out and buy these vehicles that were more expensive even with the rebates, they rushed out, made their purchase, and that cohort has now for now been satisfied. And then the rebates disappeared, right, and sales are dropping. So uh, if you look at the trend line, last year about this time, we hit kind of peak EV in British Columbia, uh up to around 24% of the new all new vehicles were electric. So hitting the 26% requirement for the 26 wall year on the service seemed achievable. Yeah. Except in the bottom dropped out. And now the latest numbers I looked last week, Statistics Canada for British Columbia, uh, the number of the percentage of EV sales dropped to 13.2%. Uh so about half of what the requirement is for the 26th model year. We've dropped to half of what it's supposed to be. And you know, the trend line is not good. It's it's dropping, all right, rising.
SPEAKER_00:So it went from one in every four car sold was an EV to one in every seven, but overnight. And you're saying it's because of the disappearance of the rebate thing. But there must be more going on. I mean, at Energy Futures, you've been publishing some studies, you've been leaning in on this. You've got some other findings too, don't you?
SPEAKER_01:We do, and this is new news. Okay. So uh we commissioned Ipsos to do a survey. We were out first last year and they did an update this year. And what are the barriers to people purchasing an electric vehicle? What's holding you back if if you're that's the question. Number one is cost, okay? Number one issue is cost. And that's uniform across the province. Uh, but then it gets more interesting. Okay, the number two reason is difficulty with public charging. Where am I going to charge this vehicle? Right. Not everybody lives in a single-family home with a garage where they can securely park their vehicle overnight and uh spend extra money to install a level two charger or something at home. Um in fact, about 40% of British Columbians live in multifamily homes. So that gets more challenging. So yeah, and that's reflected in the polling. In the Lower Mainland, there was less concern about where am I going to charge my vehicle. But outside the Lower Mainland, Vancouver Island, the North, the Okanagan, that issue r rises up. Okay. So where am I going to charge this vehicle? So number one is cost. Number two is where are we going to charge it? Okay. Any other concerns? Uh endurance or uh range. Range anxiety. Range anxiety, yeah. And guess what? Range anxiety is higher outside of the lower mainland. Well, that's not rocket science. It's what you would expect. Yeah. But we don't have the numbers to confirm it. It's no longer an educated guess, right? We don't have empirical data showing that it's it is a real concern for people. It's not just speculative. This is what's what people are expressing.
SPEAKER_00:Now, there's a lot of advertising out there telling people, hey, get an EV, it's cleaner, you you just plug it in, you don't have to pay for gasoline. It's it's maintenance-free pretty much. I hear that line a lot. Is is that not sufficiently enticing to the public to just want to buy electric cars? What's uh some might be wondering what's wrong with the public? Why aren't they not doing this?
SPEAKER_01:Well, I'll make this clear at the outset. I love the technology. It's it is funny you drive. I drive a plug-in hybrid. Plug in hybrid. So I have a bit of both going on. I can go, you know, 65, 70 kilometers on a charge.
SPEAKER_00:Right.
SPEAKER_01:Uh so for my day-to-day, that's often sufficient.
SPEAKER_00:And I so you can go down to get some groceries and come home without any use of correct gasoline, take my kids to school or swimming lessons or whatever, and uh and we're fine.
SPEAKER_01:Uh longer distance, well, once the battery's depleted, then the gasoline engine kicks in. Um, but uh, you know, teach their own. So it's not for everyone.
SPEAKER_00:Um there there must be, you know, that's maybe not the uh EV uh planner's dream for everyone, but you know, it's kind of okay. Do you get any credit for that?
SPEAKER_01:Uh under the system, a plug-in hybrid will get some credit for a certain period of time. Okay. If it has a certain amount of range, which I believe is going up to 80 kilometers required. Does anyone make such a car? I believe only Mercedes. Right. So if you can afford a Mercedes. I think next year, Toyota is planning to come out with a RAV4 plug-in hybrid. Right. Uh, that they're hoping will it have that range. It's being tested now by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. You know, you hear about this EPA rating uh fuel economy. Well, they're doing the same thing for the plug-in hybrid. So it's in testing right now to see what their EPA range, but Toyota's hoping it'll get that 80-kilometer rating for electric only. But it'll be one of very, very few plug-in electric vehicles in the whole world that can accomplish that at the moment. As we mentioned, it's I believe it's Mercedes is selling a plug-in hybrid that gets more than uh 80 kilometers range.
SPEAKER_00:And what about other issues involving the consumer? I mean, they're just not getting up to speed with this. Um there must be a lot of people in Metro Vancouver living in condos and townhouses. Do they have an easy time, hard time getting the power they want?
SPEAKER_01:I I think for most people they hear it in passing, sounds like a great idea, right? Until it comes down to them having to make a decision and trying to purchase a vehicle. Okay. And then stumbling into this, pardon me? I I'm having to get an electric vehicle or being pushed in this direction. And where am I going to charge it if I live in an apartment building? Right. Some apartment buildings have some chargers. But if a lot of people have an electric vehicle, then there's competition for limited spaces to plug in. And it is causing conflict in strata councils, not in the future, but right now, because stratas are grappling with the question: do we spend our money to uh retrofit our aging apartment building to increase the electrical service and capability and install these chargers for those few people that have EVs at the cost of everyone else? What's the fair way to apportion these costs? What do we do? And and like I said, there's limited space, and right now there's limited electrical capacity at the local level. Never mind generating it, where we're going to generate the electricity, another question that energy futures have looked into. But once you get those electrons from wherever they're generated, how do you get them into your apartment building and to your parking stall and then into your vehicle? That's not as easy as it sounds. And many people in the electric utility business tell me very generating the electricity, yes, that's a big challenge and it's costly, but that's the easiest part of the question. The hardest part is getting it from there through transmission lines into your neighborhood, through substations, stepped down and distributed, and then into your apartment building and into your parking stall and into your vehicle. That process gets very expensive and time consuming. So the different people, depending on their living arrangements, face different challenges. I recently encountered someone in my community who was having a debate with someone uh in the restaurant or in the valley. Yes, uh, about electric vehicles. This other person said, Oh, they're terrible. I'd never get one, they don't work. This guy said, Well, actually, they work great if you have the right setup. And then he went on to describe, I believe his name is Gord, that he has a for five years, has driven a Model 3, Tesla Model 3, and he drives 160 kilometers every day for work, 80 kilometers, one direction and mag, and is able, wants to charge at home in his townhouse. And in order to do that, he had to upgrade his electrical service to get enough electrons overnight so the car is ready to do the other 160 kilometers returned. Uh, just the standard wall plug wouldn't give him that amount of electricity overnight. He had to upgrade a service to what's known as level two. Right. But turned out his townhouse was already almost maxed out in terms of service, the the amount of electricity. Pretty typical situation. I I think so. I don't know. But for him, he asked the electrician, what are my choices? What can I do? Said, well, the easiest thing is to take out your electric stove, which is a 40-amp service, dedicated service for this, take that out, put in a natural gas stove, and then reallocate that electrical service that was dedicated to your stove and bring that to your garage. And then we can put in a level two charger for your Tesla. And that's what he did. And he was fortunate in the sense that his townhouse was already piped with natural gas. Right.
SPEAKER_00:Now, if he was in Vancouver, would he be able to do that? Haven't they banned natural gas?
SPEAKER_01:For new construction, yes. Effectively, you won't be finding townhouses anymore or anything else being built with natural gas service because of recent changes uh in municipal rules called the Zero Carbon Step Code. Uh, this is being encouraged by the provincial government under their clean BC policy, but a number of municipalities have jumped the gun before it's mandatory. And places like Vancouver, Richmond, Burnaby, recently Maple Ridge, Victoria, Saanich, Nanaimo, and Whistler, and I think some others have said, okay, well, we're just going to do this. Right.
SPEAKER_00:Well, it it sounds like Gord is a pretty good example for uh kind of practical solutions where where you're able to exercise that option. But you're right. It's an unexpected solution, though.
SPEAKER_01:And it depends on having that option. But what we're finding with the policy is it's taking away choice or options by saying in the future you won't have natural gas service, right? So how will you free up your electrical supply? In Court's case, you wouldn't have you wouldn't have the natural gas to put use for his cooking. Well, and then he wouldn't be able to charge his Tesla.
SPEAKER_00:And there's a whole bunch of other townhouses, it's not just his. So they're all going to make a choice if they're at the point where they might want to look at an EV. Correct. Would they all land the same place that Core did? I I wonder. You can see why this is a more complicated issue than was originally thought. So so where is this headed? Uh you you were down at the dealer's lot, you took a look at the the RAV4. Uh this is really popular. So popular, you can't get one? There's a long waiting list to get.
SPEAKER_01:Waiting list, yeah. Uh and so everyone wants a hybrid RAV4. And the the factories are going full tilt. Right. The uh surprising thing I learned is Toyota is the number one manufacturer of cars today in Canada by volume. And also in terms of employees that they support in Canada, followed by Honda, which is manufacturing the Honda Civic, including the hybrid version, and the CRV, which is a sport utility similar to the RAP 4, including the hybrid. And it's made in Canada. But again, under the electric vehicle mandates, both federal and provincial, those vehicles aren't good enough. Uh and so in effect, our mandates are going to encourage Canadians and British Columbians to take their hard-earned dollars and not spend it on something made in Canada, but send it on something built uh in the United States or offshore. And I think that's it's got to be an unintended consequence, especially this time when we're facing tariffs and trade uncertainty and threats from the United States, that our own legislation is compounding the problem and is maybe in the auto sector even worse than the tariffs that were essentially banning or punishing the purchase of vehicles made in Canada. So is it just BC doing this or is everyone else in Canada Trevor Burrus? There's the federal mandate. It's not as aggressive in the early years uh in terms of percentages, but the framework is very similar. Right. What about the USA? Uh that's kind of off the table now. What they're not they're not following through with NEV. They never did have really a strict Donald Trump. More about a market thing. I mean, things they do down there. Don't look gold with the market decide. The Biden administration had targets.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:But they weren't firm mandates. Right. Um, Donald Trump and his campaign referred to them as mandates, and that was quite an effective communications to him, but they weren't nearly as rigid as ours. Okay. But even those targets have been removed by the uh Trump administration. And uh I think in California, there's questions about whether their electric vehicle mandates will stay in place. They're not as aggressive as British Columbia's. Um I think their requirement is 68% electric vehicle sales by 2030, whereas in British Columbia it's 90%.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So the most aggressive in North America here are here in British Columbia.
SPEAKER_00:Now, a lot of people will be used to when you want to get a new car, you look in the the weekend paper. Well, I guess maybe you don't have a weekend paper. You look, you look online, you find all the ads for the cars, then you go down to open road, and there's 10 dealerships, and you can go around the circle in Richmond and see hundreds of different models of cars, and then you can decide which one you want to buy, and then you can buy it and you can drive away, maybe right then and there, or maybe you have to wait for a special order. Is that how things are gonna be in a few years based on what you saw today?
SPEAKER_01:I would say it's not like that right now, for at least for certain. Well, I'm already living in the past. Yeah, I it's it's hard. And it's been slim pickings ever since COVID. Right. We had the supply chain disruption caused by COVID, yeah, and now we're having a supply chain disruption caused by electric vehicle mandates. Okay. So this one's kind of self-imposed by federal and provincial governments.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. So we were headed for this um bureaucratic nirvana where all the cars on the road, especially the new ones coming on, would have no tailpipe emissions, everyone would love them, everyone would be able to afford them, no matter how humble their circumstances. Is that how things have turned out? Uh no, they haven't.
SPEAKER_01:And you would think our provincial government would maybe lead by example. Uh, but I took a look at a recent report from BC Hydro about their vehicle fleet. BC Hydro, our government-owned electrical utility that is promulgating uh electricity and electricity usage, promoting it. Uh guess what? Less than 5% of their entire vehicle fleet of about 5,000 vehicles are electric. So 95% are not. And yet manufacturers are being told you have to sell 26% electric vehicles starting the 26th model year. Right.
SPEAKER_00:And probably a lot of those vehicles are service trucks and things like that that you need to be presumably able to get out in a storm and go fix that.
SPEAKER_01:But to me, that kind of proves the point. The different people, different companies have different needs. Yeah. And this one size fits all solution imposed by the heavy-handed government is running up to reality. And different people have different issues. Right. It doesn't work for everyone. So I was on a talk show recently on CKW and caller said, but wait a minute, I need a F 350 or a diesel-powered truck for my work. I live in Campbell River. Uh work off-road in rugged terrain. Are you telling me I'm supposed to rely on an electric vehicle when VC Hydro won't for their heavy-duty work? Why why the double standard? It's a good question.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Okay. Well, where is this going? Where where will we be in 2030? I know there's a big milestone you hear a lot. Is it 90% of all new vehicles sold in VC have to be have to be electric vehicles? Um how how are we going to get there from where we are now? Well, we won't. Okay. We won't. Any advice for the government then? I'm I'm assuming they're concerned about this. I would hope so.
SPEAKER_01:I I think uh uh recognition of reality uh is an order. And again, if you look at other jurisdictions that are held up as a poster child in Norway, they didn't get to where they are in terms of a high percentage of electric vehicle sales by sales mandates. Uh they did it with tax policy, uh significant subsidies for those people that purchased electric vehicles, big subsidies for electric charging. Uh they also had a long runway. They started at this uh more than 10 years ago, maybe 15 years ago. Um and it's cost them a lot of money. It's cost the Treasury billions of dollars in US dollars if you convert the currency uh for a population about the size of British Columbia. Right. Uh and the question is given our provincial government's balance sheet and the credit downgrades that we've had recently, with more to come probably, given the increasing deficits and more borrowing, uh, do we have the fiscal firepower to replicate what Norway did over a lengthy period of time and then compress that into a couple of years? Yeah. Uh I think we know what the answer is.
SPEAKER_00:And I'm just wondering if there's a a deeper theme here, Barry. It sounds like we've got this appetite to go as quickly as possible to a great, a perfect outcome where we aspire to do the right thing, we want to lower emissions, and we got to get there as quickly as possible. So let's make sure that we've got uh some rules that get us there really fast. And it turns out that in the case of EVs, the evidence in the real world doesn't support that. And then, meanwhile, you've got uh what we know is a mindset amongst the manufacturers of cars to make them more and more efficient all the time, no matter what kind of cars. I'm sure they're making EVs more efficient, and I'm sure they're making hybrids more efficient. But I'm also sure, because I've looked into this, that they're making gasoline and diesel cars more efficient too in all these little ways, right? Is there something here about, you know, that that age-old human quest for perfection that has prevented us from seeing things that are, you know, okay, because they're incremental and going in the right direction?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I think there is. Uh and I I understand the impetus. Yeah, you know, we're trying to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and other emissions. Uh, and we have made great strides in reducing those other emissions. We seldom talk about air quality problems anymore in the lower mainland. We used to. That's right. And that's because the cars have cleaned up a lot.
SPEAKER_00:We used to see that layer of smog. It was kind of yellow flying in. It was really noticeable that you don't see it anymore, especially coming in on the ferry, especially from Naimo. You come in towards the east, you look at the city, and you don't have that haze in it.
SPEAKER_01:And I live in the Fraser Valley. There were there would be summers that we'd go days, sometimes weeks, that you couldn't see the mountains, even though it wasn't cloudy. Right. It was the haze or the smog. So there's been huge improvements, but uh there is a desire to get there quickly. And I understand that impetus, however, it comes up against reality and practicality. So there's that old expression um don't let your desire for the perfect get in the way of the good and become the enemy of the good. And I think that's unfortunately what's happening. So something like the Toyota Prius, you know, that's the legendary hybrid car, been around decades. Yeah. Uh last year, it set a Guinness world record. It was the newest model, the latest previous. It's yeah, you can it's in production now. Yeah. Go down to the dealer, see if you can get one. There's a waiting list for that too, right? Because it's desirable. Um, but this individual, a person in the United States, drove it, and it was all checked out by Guinness. Uh drove it from Los Angeles City Hall to New York City Hall, cross country. And he managed to average 93 miles to the gallon. He didn't modify the vehicle. It wasn't aftermarket anything. It was just a stock vehicle. Is that going at highway speed? I'm not sure exactly how he pulled it off. I wonder. But it was verified. He managed to hit 93 miles to the gallon, and it's a world record for a production vehicle. And that's the result of continuous technological improvement. Continuing to tweak and improve the efficiency of the vehicle, the design, the aerodynamics, uh, and the hybrid battery system and combined with the internal combustion engine, all these things working together. Uh the vehicle wasn't that efficient 20 years ago, not even 10 years ago, but continued reinvestment in research. But when governments come along and say, never mind that, you have to only do this. But it discourages innovation and the creative thought process.
SPEAKER_00:The buying public has figured that out in Canada because you can't get a hybrid because your neighbor has bought it, they're they're sold out. The EVs, can you get those?
SPEAKER_01:They're much more readily available, yes.
SPEAKER_00:But are people buying them? Uh that's why they're available. They're not selling people only buying the EVs. And what about old-fashioned gasoline cars?
SPEAKER_01:Well, they're uh going to become more scarce. And you know, here's the thing. NBC. Yes. Uh not in Alberta. But we could maybe get yourself to uh Saskatoon. There is a risk, uh, and it maybe is already happening, of arbitrage. Yeah. Uh people setting up mechanisms for getting vehicles in Alberta and bringing them into British Columbia and finding workarounds to uh source their vehicles that way. And I I worry as a former public policy maker in British Columbia that we will experience what we call leakage, which is our dollars, tax dollars will flow elsewhere and rather into ARC offers where we desperately need them given the size of our deficit and ongoing spending.
SPEAKER_00:Well, presumably there'll be someone in the tax department who's trying to find a well they keep trying to close, but we know how it works.
SPEAKER_01:People are very creative, they'll find our workarounds. I'll close one door, you open another, right? But uh, back to the EV thing. Um, one of the goals with the mandates was to force manufacturers to make electric vehicles. Right. Well, they all do. All the mainstream manufacturers have them available to your customer. To you, you can go buy one if you want one. And like I said, they're available in the lot, unlike you know, hybrids or or other non-electric vehicles. Uh you can easily get one. But they're not selling in in quantity. Yeah. So the manufacturers have made them available. They've now they've spent billions of dollars in research and development. And so they're there. And what are consumers doing? Some are buying them, but like I said, the most recent data in BC was only 13% of new sale car sales in June were electric, which means, let's see my grade 12 math here, 87% weren't. 87% weren't, and people had the choice. They had the option. And 87% chose a non-electric.
SPEAKER_00:So that's what people are doing in practice. Um you gotta be wondering at this point, how does it end? Is BC going to be this sort of experiment that continues on this trajectory or is there some pivot? What do what do you think? What do you predict, Barry?
SPEAKER_01:Well, the province of Quebec maybe has shown us the path forward to some extent. Uh, about a month ago, they announced that they are going to modify their EV mandates that were almost as aggressive as BC's, British Columbia's, uh, to start giving partial credit for regular hybrid vehicles. So you got a half credit towards your coal percentage required. But the government also said this isn't the end of our changes. More it's coming, but we want the federal government to signal what they're doing. All right. And they explicitly called on the federal government to recognize economic reality. Their phrase, not mine, the province of Quebec called on the federal government to recognize economic reality and modify the federal EV mandates. And the Quebec government's waiting to see what the feds do. My sources tell me the province of BC is in a similar position. They're waiting for the federal government to make the first move uh before they act. But Quebec didn't wait. They went and made partial changes, like I said, a month ago to allow some credit for regular hybrids. And I think they also lowered their targets.
SPEAKER_00:All right. So you've done the polling, you've analyzed the polling, you've gone out and been talking to people like like Gord in the in the pub with his uh with his old stove he got rid of. Yeah, so I could get a gas stove, so he could plug in his EV. That's that's a pretty funny story, Barry. Um now you used to be in politics. Uh, what happens when you get a poll in politics? I mean, what you look at the information, what what's the deal?
SPEAKER_01:Uh polling information to politicians is like catnip to cats. Right. Uh the politicians usually are extremely interested in what the public's thinking because their job literally depends on it. Um, so I'm hoping that we are at Energy Futures helping show a path forward to the government. Uh, the public, 76% of them think that regular hybrid should count. Right. Uh, and a majority, 56%, say just get rid of the mandates altogether. Um and of those that strongly support that notion, it's it's pretty intense. You know, three and a half times more people support that statement than support the statement of keeping them.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, so just one last thing. I mean, I I think I think a lot of people want to see a win-win here. They want to see a win for the environment. They want to see a win for whatever it is public is preferring, right?
SPEAKER_01:In the economy by investing in Canada. So what's the way to the win-win? I I think pouring a little bit of water in your wine when it comes to the mandates.
SPEAKER_00:Because you'll get, say, more hybrids, which are demonstrably more efficient, like the example of the Prius driving across the US 93 miles a gallon. That's pretty good. What else? We could see more public uh investment in infrastructure for charging. Right.
SPEAKER_01:So you could more incrementally over time, you could build where the rapid buildout just never happened. It hasn't. It sure, we have more charging stations than we did five years ago. It's not enough. But still not enough. Yeah. Um to support the kind of percentage of penetration of EVs that the government is saying is required. And then there's the question we haven't really talked about. Where will the extra electricity come from? And how much would we need it if everyone was driving an electric vehicle in British Columbia? How much more electricity would that take? And the answer, according to a study we did at Energy Futures, uh, we turned to Professor Jerome Gesseroli at the BC Institute of Technology, teaches a business there. And he crunched the numbers and said we need roughly two more Site C dams worth of electricity just to power electric vehicles, if that's what we replaced our existing vehicle fleet with.
SPEAKER_00:Right. So that was what,$16 billion for one Site C. So maybe it'll be that much, maybe more inflation. But it's hard to find a place where you could build something that big.
SPEAKER_01:And you can probably build more wind turbines and solar power and other things. But yeah, you need more. And as I said earlier, new generations, the easiest part of the question is how do you get the electrons then once you generate it? And that's expensive and difficult on its own. But then how do you distribute it to your charger in your underground parking garage in a 40-year-old building?
SPEAKER_00:Well, look, the getting the electrons, but let's leave that for next time because I want to have you back. There's so much more that could be discussed on this. But I really appreciate the deep dive into EVs, electric vehicles, the policy, what's happening in BC. Can you get a car from a dealer? Yes or no? If you can, what's it going to cost? Amazing answers you've you've brought to my questions. Appreciate it. Thanks, Barry. Yeah, you're welcome. I enjoyed it.
