Annual public meeting
Research in energy and high-tech: Driving the new sustainable economy
Discover how research and innovation are transforming two drivers of Canada’s economy and why investors see a bright future for these sectors
Peter Tertzakian
Best-selling author of A Thousand Barrels a Second and The End of Energy Obesity, Founder of ARC Energy Research Institute and Managing Director of ARC Financial, Canada’s largest energy focused private equity manager
Mark Blackwell
Investing partner at international venture fund, Builders VC, promoter of high-tech start-ups and named one of 2022’s Top 40 Under 40 by Calgary’s Avenue magazine
moderated by
Roseann O’Reilly Runte
President and CEO of the Canada Foundation for Innovation
Officials also reported on the 2022-23 activities of the CFI.
Our annual public meeting keynote panel
How research and innovation are transforming two drivers of Canada’s economy and why investors see a bright future for these sectors
Roseann O’Reilly Runte:
It's a great pleasure to introduce two experts in economics. Two thoughtful leaders in their respective fields whose expertise is frequently sought, as we navigate the challenges of balancing the demands of energy and climate change, the rapid evolution of technology. What will the world's most ChatGPT look like and how can Canada compete and flourish on the Global stage? I'm going to introduce Mark first, he is a general partner at Builder's BC, we should put you on our board, a $500 million international investment firm, located in the Silicon Valley. He was previously product manager of Solar Winds and CEO of GNS3 Technologies, where he led the rebrand and launched their online community which now has some 2 million users from 60 countries and certain companies which you might recognize, such as the Department of Defence, ATNT, Google, Facebook and even Walmart. He was investment manager at Cenovus Energy and led financing in hifi engineering and [inaudible]. He previously worked in technology investment banking at CIBC World Markets and as a business development analyst for Enbridge, the energy transportation company. He is a graduate in finance from this very university and he received the Order of the University Alumni Association, future alumni award. He was named Top 20 Compelling Calgarian, a Top 40 under 40 Rising Star Alumni award and a 2021 Rising Star with Venture Capital magazine. He continued his education with Venture Cap Executive programs at Harvard and Berkley and he is also associate of the creative destruction lab at Rotman. He is Board chair of the $100 million opportunity Calgary investment fund. Board of Governors of the University of Calgary. I was trying not to have everybody from Calgary, but how could we not have Mark. He was vice chair of the university's $2.2 billion investment endowment fund, a board member of Emissions Reduction Alberta, which funds climate and emission related technology projects and I'm not sure if this is true but I did find it on the internet and I know you can't believe everything is on the internet, but he is an advisor and owner of the Elbow Room, a well known restaurant in Calgary. We should have gone there for dinner last night.
Mark Blackwell:
It's shutdown, so. [Laughs]. Lesson learned, we didn't get there. [Laughs].
Runte:
Okay. Peter Tertzakian who you see on screen with the lovely yellow background behind him, looks like sunshine is deputy director of ARC Energy Research Institute, managing director of ARC Financial Group and that is an energy focused private equity firm. He is the creator of Energy File, a multimedia project on energy. He has a bachelor of science in geophysics from the University of Alberta. There people from Edmonton will be happy. And a graduate degree of econometrics from the University of Southampton, our board chair will recognize that. And a MSC in management technology from MIT. He is adjunct professor at the University of Calgary. As an university graduate we call that an all around graduate. He has served on the four person royalty review panel for Alberta and led in the redesign of the fiscal policy. He has been inducted into the Petroleum Hall of Fame and is a member of the advisory board of the Institute of Sustainable Finance and serves as chair of the board of the Contemporary Calgary Art Gallery. He is author of several books including, A Thousand Barrels a Second, and that's not maple syrup. The End of Energy Obesity and The Investor Wizard and Other Stories of Disruption, Denial and Transition in the Energy Business. As if that weren't enough he also writes a weekly column, ARC Energy charts and is a regular mediator commentator.
So together today we are going to look at two problems of the economy. What ways are they independent and what ways are they symbiotic? What do you think Mark?
Blackwell:
Thank you so much for having me here today and hey, Peter. Peter and I have had these conversations over long periods of time and I think from my perspective, so, just a little bit of background. My day job I operate as a venture capitalist whereas mentioned I have billion dollar venture fund that focus on antiquated industries and so are focused on human health, agriculture, industrial and the construction sector. So we have collectively as a partnership in this business for about 20-30 years, dating all the way back to the clean tech days of the 2000 era where my partners and I spent a bunch of time at Coastal Adventures. So we have a bit of a unique perspective, similar to Peter, looking at the question around independent, how they are interdependent and how they are symbiotic. We had an interesting conversation about this a couple of weeks ago. Let me kind of hit each of those topics a little bit. I think the independence piece, there are cycles that drive both energy and high tech and I think that Peter can definitely talk about the cycles within the energy sector part, better than I can and around the commodity cycles. I think even dating back to the early 2000's, the technology sector has gone through it's own set of cycles. So, from an independence perspective I think there are unique economic drivers that drive technology and drive energy independently, but I think really to the heart of this conversation today is how the two sectors collided and how they are extremely interdependent dating back, all the way to early formation of the oil and gas sector and the energy sector and I think there is a couple data points and examples of how high technology and energy have played a very symbiotic role together. If you even look at this province, back to I believe it was in the early 1970's with the Institution of AOSTRA technology was at the core. It was a vision that the Alberta government had around unlocking the potential of the oil sands and that was a significant catalyst where technology drove the ability to unlock the immense amount of resource we had in this province. So I would say now, more than ever, the two worlds are colliding. I don't think you could ever think about energy without having technology embedded inside of it. Then you look at what is happening now and Peter and I have chatted about this over long periods of time into the early days of clean technology climate, whatever you want to call it now a days, it's back in vogue. I would say there's a renascence period that has been created in this category. Last year alone, I think there was $71 billion of capital deployed in climate technology. You date back to 2006-2011 during the early clean tech [inaudible] there was $20 billion of capital deployed in the sector. So I think collectively over the past decade there has been over $100 billion of just technology investments directing the energy sector with very high tech solutions. So we have seen waves of you know, you talk about independence in the areas, energy sector is probably all-time highs. The tech sector right now in this country is definitely seeing a down curve and we can get into some of those specifics, but I think that Peter would probably agree even dating back to his early days as [inaudible] research analyst, that technology has been absolute core part of the sector and will continue to be.
Runte:
So when you say colliding, that causes me a little concern. Is it like a nuclear physics experiment where we bring the particles together and they collide and they get together and they do something, you know, they are a bigger particle or is it when they collide together and there are sparks of energy and all sorts of things that come out this side that you don't expect. What kind of collision is it do you think?
Blackwell:
I think there is two sides and I will relate it back to our portfolio. You take the Renaissance of ChatGPT and how the effects it is having on every sector quite frankly. There is the frontier side of things. You know, the disruptive technologies, I never would have thought in 100 years that there would be a $250 million nuclear fusion Venture capital fund exclusively focused on that as a subsector. So I think there are continued investments in frontier technologies that are disruptive, but I think at the core of it, Peter will see this through his portfolio in ARC, there is also the efficiency pieces. We see this in practical terms with our portfolio. You know this idea that you can take a 2X developer and make them a 10X developer. This idea that you can now use Chat GPT to augment an entire sales team. There are efficiency gains that are being made through enabling technologies and then there is the frontier technologies that are out there, that are early in TRL cycle, but have truly transformative opportunities to change energy systems and that's direct R capture, nuclear fusion, different things like that are coming back into vogue, driven by the renaissance of capital, but also looking at the policy piece. You look at the Inflation Reduction Act in the United States, a bunch of our companies are going after some of that money. I think, that's a couple $100 million at stake through investment tax credits, but also direct investing. And so we've seen these cycles even during the 2000 era, but I would say now more than ever, I don't know why it's called the Inflation Reduction Act, it should be called the Clean Tech Reduction Act because of how much capital is just being deployed. So things are changing quickly and so it's both sides of the coin around efficiency and disruption.
Runte:
That's really great. I would note that Google has three major investments in fusion and the leader of that is from Canada.
Blackwell:
Exactly.
Runte:
We are doing really well. Peter, could I ask you in your book you talk some eloquently about the asymmetry principle and you know, Canada diversity of energy and the development of high tech solutions come together and provide a solution, how do you see that relationship and how does it fit with the asymmetry principle which you might want to review because everybody didn't read your book yesterday. I am sure they did the day before though.
Peter Tertzakian:
Well thank you very much for having me I must confess I don't think I've read my book in 10 years. But the asymmetry based principle basically illustrates how inefficiency our energy systems are from beginning to end. So, in my book I charted out for example if we take the old coal fired electricity paradigm that if you take a 100 lbs of coal, burn it, make steam, turn a turbine, the turn of dynamo, make electricity, put it through the grid into your home, light a lightbulb, out of a 100 lbs of coal, you probably only use 1 lb of coal to actually get the useful work that you want as a citizen which is to light your home. Another example would be, out of every 100 barrels of oil, you probably only use 12 to turn your wheels. It means you lose 88 barrels to heat and inefficiencies in the system. So there is a tremendous asymmetry and that's not good news societally and certainly not good news considering that we are still 80+% fossil fuel dependent in the world. That's the bad news.
The good news is that things like conservation means that if you turn the lights off, you get tremendous leverage because by not using one unit of energy with the light bulb, you are saving 100 lbs of coal. [Laughs]. The book spent a couple chapters highlighting the power of things, like consumer behaviour as having huge leverage on our energy issue, plus also the notion of efficiency. If we can improve the efficiency by only a few percentage points along the journey of a drill of energy from a primary source, and that includes by the way that includes solar panels and wind turbines, we do society a tremendous service. But this is where the technology and the energy industry start to meet because whereas we are looking for the next big thing, like fusion or the next step jump in batteries and what have you, that's all fine. One of my principle arguments in the book which was published in 2009 was actually if you have $100 to spend, would you spend that entire $100 on new technologies to change the energy paradigm which takes decades and decades or would you spend some of that or a significant portion of that $100 in trying to improve the efficiency or something as low tech as trying to alter human behaviour to effectively get that leverage of our inefficiency energy system through conservation. So technology and energy meet not only in completely new paradigms of how to take a raw unit of energy at the front end and convert it to the work we want, but it's also important and this is where things like artificial intelligence and optimization of systems comes in to basically be more responsible about how energy travels for our infrastructure to our end use.
Runte:
So you said that the problems were scaling, consumption, inefficiencies, human behaviour and that it was our inability to think critically that prevents us from moving forward.
Tertzakian:
Yeah.
Runte:
If you wanted to tell us what we could do to move forward, or to start thinking more critically, or what do we do first, the consumption, the inefficiencies, where do we go?
Tertzakian:
Yeah, well, I don't want to be patronizing and say people don't think, that's not actually, we need to get people to think a little more responsibly about the consequences of their behaviour, but you know, one of the things I definitely do say is that actually technology is not the limiting factor to solving, say for example climate crisis, decarbonization and all sorts of other energy issues because so often we are told to follow the science. Maybe you've heard that line, let's follow the science and I say okay I was trained as a scientist, I get it. But actually most of my days, these days is following behavioural science. That too is a science because the limiting factors are decisions made at the kitchen table and decisions made at the board room table and how those decisions are made. I can tell you at the board room table there is paralysis in understanding how to apply technology to even basic fundamental problems and making decisions about capital allocation and at the kitchen table there is behaviour issues because of anxieties about inflation and paying the rent and so on and so forth. And so all of these are major inhibiting issues that cloud us from making better more, as you call it, critical decisions and my conjecture is actually small decisions by everyone at a kitchen table has tremendous leverage as you chain in back through asymmetry principle to the source of where the energy comes from and where the emissions are generated.
Runte:
That's really a very profound thought and as I was thinking about what you had said to me previously and I was reading a report by C. D. How, a couple of weeks ago and it said that we had gone too far in STEM and that we need to add back in the social sciences and humanities to get a better more balanced view of the world. What they were saying was that there should be more humanists and social scientists that are graduated to help, but there is also the other part where you can have a more inclusive interdisciplinary education, so that engineers actually are exposed to social sciences. Is it a little bit of both or what would you recommend?
Tertzakian:
Absolutely. Well, I completely agree we've gone too far with STEM, and I am a STEM person, I'm a deeply analytical person. I've spent two thirds of my career with my head buried in tech and spreadsheets. These days I spend most of my time figuring out how to communicate more effectively, deeply technical complex issues to people who are trying to make meaningful decisions. So if I had $100 to spend right now, I'd probably spend $60 of it at least on behavioural science and better communication of the fundamental issues. So people make better more responsible decisions, that's where the issue is.
Runte:
I think you are doing really good job on communicating right now. So thank you for that. Mark, if you were going to invest, you're a venture capitalist, if you were going to pick one investment, you can cheat and pick two if you want, where would you go?
Blackwell:
That's a great question. So I saw this thing online with 86 portfolio companies ranging from human health to genetic sequencing and new seed companies on the crop side. I would say there is two very interesting forays of technology that are getting us excited. We've been spending an immense amount of time with George Church out of Harvard University, who is the modern inventor of crisper technology. We've spun six companies out of that lab at Builder's and one very interesting platform technology that we invested in over two years is a company called Colossal Biosciences. So they are taking crisper genetic technology and synthetic embryos to bring back extinct species. So this is really at the forefront of a moonshot type technology and one would ask if we were under HEM with George Church about 6-8 weeks ago, and some of our investors are saying what is the so what equation to it and I think there are a number of implications as it relates to biodiversity on the planet, as we think about I think the World Wildlife Foundation said that 60% of the species in the world could be extinct in the next 20 years. So there is an immense amount of technology that we are investing in related to R&A drug discoveries sequencing technologies on the gene side and they said by 2027 will have a baby wholly mammoth walking on stage at our AGM in Silicon Valley. So there is massive implications and to your point there is a collective of very diverse individuals who sit around that table thinking around the ethical pieces of what species to bring back and what effects it has on biodiversity.
The second chunk of effort that we spend time on that is affecting all of our sectors is just hacking the labour equation and I think that every sector right now is dealing with, particularly on the blue collar side, labour challenges, accessing, retraining, recruiting and retaining labour. So the way that we have tackled this problem is through an immense amount of investment in robotics and so we have a company called Safe AI that is building an after kit anatomy, retrofit kits for large scale mining and construction trucks. You will get some of these operations that are looking at some of the most remote locations in the world, whether it's lithium mining extraction, coal or previous minerals. This sector is having a significant challenge both on NSG sustainability perspective, recruiting and retaining talent in South Australia is an example. It cost about $325,000 per year to operate a single truck. So the mining sector is under an immense amount of pressure related to that. So we took a team out of Caterpillar about six years ago to build aftermarket retrofit kits that could be assembled on to our large industrial vehicles to make them fully autonomous and synchronized across fleets. So that's an unique example, as we look across the areas and surveys that we do every year that talent is going to be the number issue. We talked about STEM and social sciences, there is also think of all the blue collar component to the market and you look at any statistics that are coming out of trade schools, enrollment numbers. Those numbers are at all-time lows, so there are unique ways that we are thinking about incentivization of market places and the behavioural science and how we get people into trades, but that's sector is changing dramatically and robotics, given the advances and cost curve of fundamental technologies like Lidar, are making these things really ready for prime time. I mean, I was actually about seven or eight years ago we did Silicon Valley Meets Oil Sands tour with Cenovus and they've been running autonomous fleets in the oil sands for close to a decade. Three weeks ago Imperial Oil actually made a huge announcement, they have 81 vehicles running fully autonomously in the oil sands. So there is huge advancements in scale and industrial. Everyone thinks about Waymo and Cruise and Robo Taxis if anyone goes down to San Francisco, I would highly advise to download the Waymo App and experience first hand what it's like to drive an autonomous vehicle. Now image putting yourself in a half million dollar Caterpillar driving around the oil sands. So, those are two big themes that are getting us excited these days. Yeah.
Runte:
So sometimes when we look at Canada, we have small population, but really bright and brilliant and then you read the financial pages, and sometimes I think well, my goodness, we are like the bedroom community, where United States, we send our best talent there is develop and to be developed. We send our resources there to heat their bedrooms. Is that the role that we should consider playing because we are what we are? Or should be actually change the paradigm and see Canada supporting the United States, but as part of the world and that there is a world economy that we would players in and I'm going to throw that question to Peter because I see he is writing a note down quickly.
Tertzakian:
[Laughs]. Yes, I think, you're correct, but actually in some ways it's a bit worse than that unfortunately because yes, we are a resource economy that exports a lot of our raw resources without adding value, but in the last certainly 20 years, amplified in the last 10, we seemed to villainize ourselves as being a resource economy and so that really is causing multitude of polarization issues which again I come back to this is a behavioural science issue. Is like we've got to start to learn how to build consensus as to what value we add to society, recognizing that this country was built on natural resources, recognizing that the infrastructure to extract natural resources, largely came from foreign investment, dominantly the United States. If you go back to the 1950's and 60's, there was a tacit deal that was struck with American investors and that was okay, we will come in a finance your energy infrastructure. By the way the amount of investment in Canada's oil and gas infrastructure, is about $1.9 trillion in today's dollar terms and that was largely financed by external financing that came from the US, about 70% by my calculation. Why is that all relevant because now we are being asked to transition or infrastructure to decarbonize it, to move forward? Well where is the money and the capital going to come from? Who is going to pay because as you pointed out earlier, the population base here is low, which means the capital pools are a fraction of that in the US. The Canadian government or provincial governments by themselves cannot fund energy transition. They are merely in my view, providers of seed capital from which then follows private capital, but private capital is not coming here because we have an identity crisis as to what we do and what we are good at when it comes to natural resources. To take it one step further because the United States, as already mentioned the Inflation Reduction Act or whatever you want to call it, is so lucrative, Canadian pools of capital of financing American projects. And I sit back as a Canadian and say, wait a minute, why are we financing American Net Zero, I thought we were supposed to finance our own Net Zero aspirations here. So I think this is a bit unsettling, and it should be because I think we need to have a honest conversation in this country about how we make decisions, how we overcome polarization and how we become proud of what we have historically done well and can do well again. By the way if you look at energy which is my expertise, so much technology and innovation to improve the processes of extraction and I know the same is in the mining industry has been developed in this country and exported around the world. Yet, we can't seem to get our act together, so to speak to be able to take us to the next level of prosperity which is now [inaudible] in an era of inflation and low productivity and a whole bunch of other metrics. So, I think this is a call to action and again it stems back to, I think it's behavioural science, it's not technological science.
Runte:
Thank you for that. Mark when we talked earlier, you talked about seed funding that government makes available and you were actually quite complimentary about it. So where do we go wrong, where are the gaps in our system, if you can say that, if you can't that's okay?
Blackwell:
No, I think Peter is absolutely right. We call it a big of a cottage industry and it's changed I think. We are too small of a country sometimes to be competitive with one another, whether it's east coast, west coast, Calgary versus Edmonton, just based on the population size, but I would say generally speaking Peter is absolutely right. What we have probably done well and almost to a fault now, is the early stage capitalization. I wrote down some of the organizations, Bank of Canada has collectively $1.1 billion in equity, capital invested in clean tech. They have a clean tech fund, industrial innovation fund, new deep tech quantum fund. So there is more than enough sufficient resources at the front end of the funnel.
Then you take the strategic innovation fund and how many companies in the city have gotten [inaudible] funding, STC and then also now with the Canadian Growth Fund, it's a $15 billion of capital, the first investment was made in a Calgary based company called [inaudible] $180 million financing on the geothermal side. Well, to Peter's point, guess where the first two projects are in Germany and the EU and I think all that technology has been developed here which is great but I think efficiency where it's early stage, energy technology or any one of the other sectors that we play in, we do well in a country on the TLR cycle is very good. Look at the University of Calgary, the Canadian Venture Capital Association put out the most active early stage venture funds in the country in quarter three. Guess what the number two most active venture fund was? UC, this is early in the TLR cycle, the University of Calgary was the second most active venture fund in the entire country. So I think what we've done well with the inception of CDL and all these other organizations is that we generally got this right. Now, I think what we are finding is people are tripping over each other's toes and the same challenges that exist in 2006 and 2011 with regards to Peter's point around the infrastructure like capital that takes to scale some of these companies, that's where I think we miss as a country. There has been organizations and institutes stood up to think about scale up. We do really really well, at the front end of this funnel.
Interesting example locally, people will have heard of Carbon Engineering, Carbon Engineering was started at the University of Calgary by David Keith, moved to Burnaby to start their first plant, recently acquired for $1.1 billion, it's now down in the United States. I think that's a classic example, like how we build the infrastructure to continue to scale and keep our countries in the country and hopefully some of these initiatives, you know, the Canadian Growth Fund, that's $15 billion of full capital. The infrastructure bank is starting to deploy. I think time will tell, but I think Peter's absolutely right, that there are just deficiencies as a country that we have. Even the super cluster initiatives. We got so much collective energy being put into the system around areas of expertise as a country, the question will be in the report card in two or three years, what that looks like in our ability to scale capital, scale companies and then retain companies in the country. But there are natural centers of excellence that I think we are playing on, whether it's climate and clean tech or artificial intelligence. Elon Musk has a new company XIDI. You look at half of the team, our Canadians. So the University of Montreal, U of T, even the University of Alberta and the U of C to some extent have an immense amount of intellectual capacity and the space. That is the natural center of excellence and the next foray which the U of C is spending a ton of time is the future of quantum. So I don't think we can be everything to everybody, I would say the deficiencies are how we take all this great effort, capital at the front end of the funnel and make sure that we can retain and grow our companies in the country and how can we also just pick a couple, very select opportunities that we can win on and do that really really well.
Runte:
When I listen to the two of you I feel so inspired and I think the rationale thought and proven science based on research and careful investment, there is a future for everybody, but when I turn on my television which I try never to do but I did in the hotel room last night, all I hear is vitriol and nobody wants to have that rational conversation and they are putting forward a point of view which is not reasonable. So how do we de-vitriolize the conversation? Sometimes I think it takes a tragedy to change people or it takes a great discovery to get everybody onboard but without tragedy and without discovering the secret of the universe, is there a way forward where we can get people to be good Canadians. Peter?
Tertzakian:
Yes. I really believe that because we're to the point now where I feel there is incredible fatigue with vitriol and incredible fatigue with polarization to the point where people are just starting to tune it out. People are also loathed to listen to people on a stage tell them what to do and I don't think they are doing that. The three of us Mark, we are just having a discussion, but you know, there are certainly a lot of people who will get on this stage and say you should do this, and you should do that because the world is falling apart and everybody else is wrong and I'm right. People are tired of that. So, I believe the solution is actually people just want to talk rationally, they want to get back to what you were calling critical thinking. The assumption by the loudest voices of the [inaudible] are that we are right and everybody else is dumb and stupid, but that's not actually the case. There are a lot of people that want to get into a conversation in a rationale way. So in answer to your question, I actually think its done one step at a time. It's a lot harder to control somebody in person then it is online. Or anything. I think convening in person around tables now that we can do that again, post pandemic, one step at a time is not the complete solution, but part of it. It is gather people together to participate in a conversation. To have a breakout for example at the end of the session and allow your audience which I can't see but allow them to have a conversation as a follow up, rather than just have speaker after speaker come on a stage and tell them what to do.
Runte:
Okay. That's really a great invited for me to ask Mark for kind of concluding remarks and let the room start talking. Even though you think we shouldn't, we do need advice from wise people like the two of you, you shouldn't just leave us alone to figure out. Mark do you have some guiding wisdom for the end?
Blackwell:
No, I mean, I, 100% agree with Peter and I always go back to this point. We kind of fight, even within our own province, Calgary versus Edmonton, Calgary versus Toronto. Quite frankly we are just too small of a country and too small of a province to having that debate, quite frankly. Bipartisan or not, you look at what other governments are doing around the world and not that this is the end all be all, but we look at the Reduction Inflation Act that was a very significant piece of legislature that was passed through and then you juxtapose that with collectively what we are doing in this county, and I fell to Peter's point, we no longer can have this argument, Alberta versus Ottawa and Ottawa versus BC because we are just too small of a country and collectively you look at the sum total of the parts, if these organizations don't connect the dots to one another, I mean we are absolutely dwarfed. $400 billion of capital through the IRA's getting deployed to clean energy, coupled with $394 billion of private incentives, $43 billion of consumer incentives for EV. These types of numbers are nationwide in the US and that is setting the bar and standard. So if we continue to work in silos, provinces, organizations, cities, we are not going to get anywhere. So to Peter's point, I give Peter an immense amount of credit, the amount of time that he spent in Ottawa as well as here, just trying to open the dialogue about these things because as a nation we need to kind of stand up versus organization, institution, city, province, I mean we are going to get nowhere. So that would be my take home message because I see as chaos and disorganized as it looks in the US, the transformation and you talk about pivotal events, the pandemic was a huge component to it. You look at onshore manufacturing and how fragile the food supply chain was in the US as example, the work around domestication and manufacturing in the US was caused by the pandemic. Digital transformation and CEO of Microsoft talked about this, two years of [inaudible] information in two months, the immense amount of catalyst that caused that the US is doing that Canada is starting to do, but we are just too small of a country to be fighting with one another and so there needs to be something that is easier said than done. But the ERA's are an example, about $800 million coupled with everything else that the federal government and other provinces are doing, I would just love to see us stand up together and kind of tackle this as a country versus as a province.
Runte:
Those are inspiring words in which we can conclude. I'm going to ask everybody in the audience please stay if you like and start having a conversation. For those of you who are having brunch in Newfoundland or just having your wake up orange juice in British Columbia, emailed us your questions and we will get back to you with some kind of response. I would like to thank you all for being here, but I would particularly like to thank Mark and Peter, you are both wise men and we are privileged to have you in this country.
Blackwell:
Thank you.
It's a great pleasure to introduce two experts in economics. Two thoughtful leaders in their respective fields whose expertise is frequently sought, as we navigate the challenges of balancing the demands of energy and climate change, the rapid evolution of technology. What will the world's most ChatGPT look like and how can Canada compete and flourish on the Global stage? I'm going to introduce Mark first, he is a general partner at Builder's BC, we should put you on our board, a $500 million international investment firm, located in the Silicon Valley. He was previously product manager of Solar Winds and CEO of GNS3 Technologies, where he led the rebrand and launched their online community which now has some 2 million users from 60 countries and certain companies which you might recognize, such as the Department of Defence, ATNT, Google, Facebook and even Walmart. He was investment manager at Cenovus Energy and led financing in hifi engineering and [inaudible]. He previously worked in technology investment banking at CIBC World Markets and as a business development analyst for Enbridge, the energy transportation company. He is a graduate in finance from this very university and he received the Order of the University Alumni Association, future alumni award. He was named Top 20 Compelling Calgarian, a Top 40 under 40 Rising Star Alumni award and a 2021 Rising Star with Venture Capital magazine. He continued his education with Venture Cap Executive programs at Harvard and Berkley and he is also associate of the creative destruction lab at Rotman. He is Board chair of the $100 million opportunity Calgary investment fund. Board of Governors of the University of Calgary. I was trying not to have everybody from Calgary, but how could we not have Mark. He was vice chair of the university's $2.2 billion investment endowment fund, a board member of Emissions Reduction Alberta, which funds climate and emission related technology projects and I'm not sure if this is true but I did find it on the internet and I know you can't believe everything is on the internet, but he is an advisor and owner of the Elbow Room, a well known restaurant in Calgary. We should have gone there for dinner last night.
Mark Blackwell:
It's shutdown, so. [Laughs]. Lesson learned, we didn't get there. [Laughs].
Runte:
Okay. Peter Tertzakian who you see on screen with the lovely yellow background behind him, looks like sunshine is deputy director of ARC Energy Research Institute, managing director of ARC Financial Group and that is an energy focused private equity firm. He is the creator of Energy File, a multimedia project on energy. He has a bachelor of science in geophysics from the University of Alberta. There people from Edmonton will be happy. And a graduate degree of econometrics from the University of Southampton, our board chair will recognize that. And a MSC in management technology from MIT. He is adjunct professor at the University of Calgary. As an university graduate we call that an all around graduate. He has served on the four person royalty review panel for Alberta and led in the redesign of the fiscal policy. He has been inducted into the Petroleum Hall of Fame and is a member of the advisory board of the Institute of Sustainable Finance and serves as chair of the board of the Contemporary Calgary Art Gallery. He is author of several books including, A Thousand Barrels a Second, and that's not maple syrup. The End of Energy Obesity and The Investor Wizard and Other Stories of Disruption, Denial and Transition in the Energy Business. As if that weren't enough he also writes a weekly column, ARC Energy charts and is a regular mediator commentator.
So together today we are going to look at two problems of the economy. What ways are they independent and what ways are they symbiotic? What do you think Mark?
Blackwell:
Thank you so much for having me here today and hey, Peter. Peter and I have had these conversations over long periods of time and I think from my perspective, so, just a little bit of background. My day job I operate as a venture capitalist whereas mentioned I have billion dollar venture fund that focus on antiquated industries and so are focused on human health, agriculture, industrial and the construction sector. So we have collectively as a partnership in this business for about 20-30 years, dating all the way back to the clean tech days of the 2000 era where my partners and I spent a bunch of time at Coastal Adventures. So we have a bit of a unique perspective, similar to Peter, looking at the question around independent, how they are interdependent and how they are symbiotic. We had an interesting conversation about this a couple of weeks ago. Let me kind of hit each of those topics a little bit. I think the independence piece, there are cycles that drive both energy and high tech and I think that Peter can definitely talk about the cycles within the energy sector part, better than I can and around the commodity cycles. I think even dating back to the early 2000's, the technology sector has gone through it's own set of cycles. So, from an independence perspective I think there are unique economic drivers that drive technology and drive energy independently, but I think really to the heart of this conversation today is how the two sectors collided and how they are extremely interdependent dating back, all the way to early formation of the oil and gas sector and the energy sector and I think there is a couple data points and examples of how high technology and energy have played a very symbiotic role together. If you even look at this province, back to I believe it was in the early 1970's with the Institution of AOSTRA technology was at the core. It was a vision that the Alberta government had around unlocking the potential of the oil sands and that was a significant catalyst where technology drove the ability to unlock the immense amount of resource we had in this province. So I would say now, more than ever, the two worlds are colliding. I don't think you could ever think about energy without having technology embedded inside of it. Then you look at what is happening now and Peter and I have chatted about this over long periods of time into the early days of clean technology climate, whatever you want to call it now a days, it's back in vogue. I would say there's a renascence period that has been created in this category. Last year alone, I think there was $71 billion of capital deployed in climate technology. You date back to 2006-2011 during the early clean tech [inaudible] there was $20 billion of capital deployed in the sector. So I think collectively over the past decade there has been over $100 billion of just technology investments directing the energy sector with very high tech solutions. So we have seen waves of you know, you talk about independence in the areas, energy sector is probably all-time highs. The tech sector right now in this country is definitely seeing a down curve and we can get into some of those specifics, but I think that Peter would probably agree even dating back to his early days as [inaudible] research analyst, that technology has been absolute core part of the sector and will continue to be.
Runte:
So when you say colliding, that causes me a little concern. Is it like a nuclear physics experiment where we bring the particles together and they collide and they get together and they do something, you know, they are a bigger particle or is it when they collide together and there are sparks of energy and all sorts of things that come out this side that you don't expect. What kind of collision is it do you think?
Blackwell:
I think there is two sides and I will relate it back to our portfolio. You take the Renaissance of ChatGPT and how the effects it is having on every sector quite frankly. There is the frontier side of things. You know, the disruptive technologies, I never would have thought in 100 years that there would be a $250 million nuclear fusion Venture capital fund exclusively focused on that as a subsector. So I think there are continued investments in frontier technologies that are disruptive, but I think at the core of it, Peter will see this through his portfolio in ARC, there is also the efficiency pieces. We see this in practical terms with our portfolio. You know this idea that you can take a 2X developer and make them a 10X developer. This idea that you can now use Chat GPT to augment an entire sales team. There are efficiency gains that are being made through enabling technologies and then there is the frontier technologies that are out there, that are early in TRL cycle, but have truly transformative opportunities to change energy systems and that's direct R capture, nuclear fusion, different things like that are coming back into vogue, driven by the renaissance of capital, but also looking at the policy piece. You look at the Inflation Reduction Act in the United States, a bunch of our companies are going after some of that money. I think, that's a couple $100 million at stake through investment tax credits, but also direct investing. And so we've seen these cycles even during the 2000 era, but I would say now more than ever, I don't know why it's called the Inflation Reduction Act, it should be called the Clean Tech Reduction Act because of how much capital is just being deployed. So things are changing quickly and so it's both sides of the coin around efficiency and disruption.
Runte:
That's really great. I would note that Google has three major investments in fusion and the leader of that is from Canada.
Blackwell:
Exactly.
Runte:
We are doing really well. Peter, could I ask you in your book you talk some eloquently about the asymmetry principle and you know, Canada diversity of energy and the development of high tech solutions come together and provide a solution, how do you see that relationship and how does it fit with the asymmetry principle which you might want to review because everybody didn't read your book yesterday. I am sure they did the day before though.
Peter Tertzakian:
Well thank you very much for having me I must confess I don't think I've read my book in 10 years. But the asymmetry based principle basically illustrates how inefficiency our energy systems are from beginning to end. So, in my book I charted out for example if we take the old coal fired electricity paradigm that if you take a 100 lbs of coal, burn it, make steam, turn a turbine, the turn of dynamo, make electricity, put it through the grid into your home, light a lightbulb, out of a 100 lbs of coal, you probably only use 1 lb of coal to actually get the useful work that you want as a citizen which is to light your home. Another example would be, out of every 100 barrels of oil, you probably only use 12 to turn your wheels. It means you lose 88 barrels to heat and inefficiencies in the system. So there is a tremendous asymmetry and that's not good news societally and certainly not good news considering that we are still 80+% fossil fuel dependent in the world. That's the bad news.
The good news is that things like conservation means that if you turn the lights off, you get tremendous leverage because by not using one unit of energy with the light bulb, you are saving 100 lbs of coal. [Laughs]. The book spent a couple chapters highlighting the power of things, like consumer behaviour as having huge leverage on our energy issue, plus also the notion of efficiency. If we can improve the efficiency by only a few percentage points along the journey of a drill of energy from a primary source, and that includes by the way that includes solar panels and wind turbines, we do society a tremendous service. But this is where the technology and the energy industry start to meet because whereas we are looking for the next big thing, like fusion or the next step jump in batteries and what have you, that's all fine. One of my principle arguments in the book which was published in 2009 was actually if you have $100 to spend, would you spend that entire $100 on new technologies to change the energy paradigm which takes decades and decades or would you spend some of that or a significant portion of that $100 in trying to improve the efficiency or something as low tech as trying to alter human behaviour to effectively get that leverage of our inefficiency energy system through conservation. So technology and energy meet not only in completely new paradigms of how to take a raw unit of energy at the front end and convert it to the work we want, but it's also important and this is where things like artificial intelligence and optimization of systems comes in to basically be more responsible about how energy travels for our infrastructure to our end use.
Runte:
So you said that the problems were scaling, consumption, inefficiencies, human behaviour and that it was our inability to think critically that prevents us from moving forward.
Tertzakian:
Yeah.
Runte:
If you wanted to tell us what we could do to move forward, or to start thinking more critically, or what do we do first, the consumption, the inefficiencies, where do we go?
Tertzakian:
Yeah, well, I don't want to be patronizing and say people don't think, that's not actually, we need to get people to think a little more responsibly about the consequences of their behaviour, but you know, one of the things I definitely do say is that actually technology is not the limiting factor to solving, say for example climate crisis, decarbonization and all sorts of other energy issues because so often we are told to follow the science. Maybe you've heard that line, let's follow the science and I say okay I was trained as a scientist, I get it. But actually most of my days, these days is following behavioural science. That too is a science because the limiting factors are decisions made at the kitchen table and decisions made at the board room table and how those decisions are made. I can tell you at the board room table there is paralysis in understanding how to apply technology to even basic fundamental problems and making decisions about capital allocation and at the kitchen table there is behaviour issues because of anxieties about inflation and paying the rent and so on and so forth. And so all of these are major inhibiting issues that cloud us from making better more, as you call it, critical decisions and my conjecture is actually small decisions by everyone at a kitchen table has tremendous leverage as you chain in back through asymmetry principle to the source of where the energy comes from and where the emissions are generated.
Runte:
That's really a very profound thought and as I was thinking about what you had said to me previously and I was reading a report by C. D. How, a couple of weeks ago and it said that we had gone too far in STEM and that we need to add back in the social sciences and humanities to get a better more balanced view of the world. What they were saying was that there should be more humanists and social scientists that are graduated to help, but there is also the other part where you can have a more inclusive interdisciplinary education, so that engineers actually are exposed to social sciences. Is it a little bit of both or what would you recommend?
Tertzakian:
Absolutely. Well, I completely agree we've gone too far with STEM, and I am a STEM person, I'm a deeply analytical person. I've spent two thirds of my career with my head buried in tech and spreadsheets. These days I spend most of my time figuring out how to communicate more effectively, deeply technical complex issues to people who are trying to make meaningful decisions. So if I had $100 to spend right now, I'd probably spend $60 of it at least on behavioural science and better communication of the fundamental issues. So people make better more responsible decisions, that's where the issue is.
Runte:
I think you are doing really good job on communicating right now. So thank you for that. Mark, if you were going to invest, you're a venture capitalist, if you were going to pick one investment, you can cheat and pick two if you want, where would you go?
Blackwell:
That's a great question. So I saw this thing online with 86 portfolio companies ranging from human health to genetic sequencing and new seed companies on the crop side. I would say there is two very interesting forays of technology that are getting us excited. We've been spending an immense amount of time with George Church out of Harvard University, who is the modern inventor of crisper technology. We've spun six companies out of that lab at Builder's and one very interesting platform technology that we invested in over two years is a company called Colossal Biosciences. So they are taking crisper genetic technology and synthetic embryos to bring back extinct species. So this is really at the forefront of a moonshot type technology and one would ask if we were under HEM with George Church about 6-8 weeks ago, and some of our investors are saying what is the so what equation to it and I think there are a number of implications as it relates to biodiversity on the planet, as we think about I think the World Wildlife Foundation said that 60% of the species in the world could be extinct in the next 20 years. So there is an immense amount of technology that we are investing in related to R&A drug discoveries sequencing technologies on the gene side and they said by 2027 will have a baby wholly mammoth walking on stage at our AGM in Silicon Valley. So there is massive implications and to your point there is a collective of very diverse individuals who sit around that table thinking around the ethical pieces of what species to bring back and what effects it has on biodiversity.
The second chunk of effort that we spend time on that is affecting all of our sectors is just hacking the labour equation and I think that every sector right now is dealing with, particularly on the blue collar side, labour challenges, accessing, retraining, recruiting and retaining labour. So the way that we have tackled this problem is through an immense amount of investment in robotics and so we have a company called Safe AI that is building an after kit anatomy, retrofit kits for large scale mining and construction trucks. You will get some of these operations that are looking at some of the most remote locations in the world, whether it's lithium mining extraction, coal or previous minerals. This sector is having a significant challenge both on NSG sustainability perspective, recruiting and retaining talent in South Australia is an example. It cost about $325,000 per year to operate a single truck. So the mining sector is under an immense amount of pressure related to that. So we took a team out of Caterpillar about six years ago to build aftermarket retrofit kits that could be assembled on to our large industrial vehicles to make them fully autonomous and synchronized across fleets. So that's an unique example, as we look across the areas and surveys that we do every year that talent is going to be the number issue. We talked about STEM and social sciences, there is also think of all the blue collar component to the market and you look at any statistics that are coming out of trade schools, enrollment numbers. Those numbers are at all-time lows, so there are unique ways that we are thinking about incentivization of market places and the behavioural science and how we get people into trades, but that's sector is changing dramatically and robotics, given the advances and cost curve of fundamental technologies like Lidar, are making these things really ready for prime time. I mean, I was actually about seven or eight years ago we did Silicon Valley Meets Oil Sands tour with Cenovus and they've been running autonomous fleets in the oil sands for close to a decade. Three weeks ago Imperial Oil actually made a huge announcement, they have 81 vehicles running fully autonomously in the oil sands. So there is huge advancements in scale and industrial. Everyone thinks about Waymo and Cruise and Robo Taxis if anyone goes down to San Francisco, I would highly advise to download the Waymo App and experience first hand what it's like to drive an autonomous vehicle. Now image putting yourself in a half million dollar Caterpillar driving around the oil sands. So, those are two big themes that are getting us excited these days. Yeah.
Runte:
So sometimes when we look at Canada, we have small population, but really bright and brilliant and then you read the financial pages, and sometimes I think well, my goodness, we are like the bedroom community, where United States, we send our best talent there is develop and to be developed. We send our resources there to heat their bedrooms. Is that the role that we should consider playing because we are what we are? Or should be actually change the paradigm and see Canada supporting the United States, but as part of the world and that there is a world economy that we would players in and I'm going to throw that question to Peter because I see he is writing a note down quickly.
Tertzakian:
[Laughs]. Yes, I think, you're correct, but actually in some ways it's a bit worse than that unfortunately because yes, we are a resource economy that exports a lot of our raw resources without adding value, but in the last certainly 20 years, amplified in the last 10, we seemed to villainize ourselves as being a resource economy and so that really is causing multitude of polarization issues which again I come back to this is a behavioural science issue. Is like we've got to start to learn how to build consensus as to what value we add to society, recognizing that this country was built on natural resources, recognizing that the infrastructure to extract natural resources, largely came from foreign investment, dominantly the United States. If you go back to the 1950's and 60's, there was a tacit deal that was struck with American investors and that was okay, we will come in a finance your energy infrastructure. By the way the amount of investment in Canada's oil and gas infrastructure, is about $1.9 trillion in today's dollar terms and that was largely financed by external financing that came from the US, about 70% by my calculation. Why is that all relevant because now we are being asked to transition or infrastructure to decarbonize it, to move forward? Well where is the money and the capital going to come from? Who is going to pay because as you pointed out earlier, the population base here is low, which means the capital pools are a fraction of that in the US. The Canadian government or provincial governments by themselves cannot fund energy transition. They are merely in my view, providers of seed capital from which then follows private capital, but private capital is not coming here because we have an identity crisis as to what we do and what we are good at when it comes to natural resources. To take it one step further because the United States, as already mentioned the Inflation Reduction Act or whatever you want to call it, is so lucrative, Canadian pools of capital of financing American projects. And I sit back as a Canadian and say, wait a minute, why are we financing American Net Zero, I thought we were supposed to finance our own Net Zero aspirations here. So I think this is a bit unsettling, and it should be because I think we need to have a honest conversation in this country about how we make decisions, how we overcome polarization and how we become proud of what we have historically done well and can do well again. By the way if you look at energy which is my expertise, so much technology and innovation to improve the processes of extraction and I know the same is in the mining industry has been developed in this country and exported around the world. Yet, we can't seem to get our act together, so to speak to be able to take us to the next level of prosperity which is now [inaudible] in an era of inflation and low productivity and a whole bunch of other metrics. So, I think this is a call to action and again it stems back to, I think it's behavioural science, it's not technological science.
Runte:
Thank you for that. Mark when we talked earlier, you talked about seed funding that government makes available and you were actually quite complimentary about it. So where do we go wrong, where are the gaps in our system, if you can say that, if you can't that's okay?
Blackwell:
No, I think Peter is absolutely right. We call it a big of a cottage industry and it's changed I think. We are too small of a country sometimes to be competitive with one another, whether it's east coast, west coast, Calgary versus Edmonton, just based on the population size, but I would say generally speaking Peter is absolutely right. What we have probably done well and almost to a fault now, is the early stage capitalization. I wrote down some of the organizations, Bank of Canada has collectively $1.1 billion in equity, capital invested in clean tech. They have a clean tech fund, industrial innovation fund, new deep tech quantum fund. So there is more than enough sufficient resources at the front end of the funnel.
Then you take the strategic innovation fund and how many companies in the city have gotten [inaudible] funding, STC and then also now with the Canadian Growth Fund, it's a $15 billion of capital, the first investment was made in a Calgary based company called [inaudible] $180 million financing on the geothermal side. Well, to Peter's point, guess where the first two projects are in Germany and the EU and I think all that technology has been developed here which is great but I think efficiency where it's early stage, energy technology or any one of the other sectors that we play in, we do well in a country on the TLR cycle is very good. Look at the University of Calgary, the Canadian Venture Capital Association put out the most active early stage venture funds in the country in quarter three. Guess what the number two most active venture fund was? UC, this is early in the TLR cycle, the University of Calgary was the second most active venture fund in the entire country. So I think what we've done well with the inception of CDL and all these other organizations is that we generally got this right. Now, I think what we are finding is people are tripping over each other's toes and the same challenges that exist in 2006 and 2011 with regards to Peter's point around the infrastructure like capital that takes to scale some of these companies, that's where I think we miss as a country. There has been organizations and institutes stood up to think about scale up. We do really really well, at the front end of this funnel.
Interesting example locally, people will have heard of Carbon Engineering, Carbon Engineering was started at the University of Calgary by David Keith, moved to Burnaby to start their first plant, recently acquired for $1.1 billion, it's now down in the United States. I think that's a classic example, like how we build the infrastructure to continue to scale and keep our countries in the country and hopefully some of these initiatives, you know, the Canadian Growth Fund, that's $15 billion of full capital. The infrastructure bank is starting to deploy. I think time will tell, but I think Peter's absolutely right, that there are just deficiencies as a country that we have. Even the super cluster initiatives. We got so much collective energy being put into the system around areas of expertise as a country, the question will be in the report card in two or three years, what that looks like in our ability to scale capital, scale companies and then retain companies in the country. But there are natural centers of excellence that I think we are playing on, whether it's climate and clean tech or artificial intelligence. Elon Musk has a new company XIDI. You look at half of the team, our Canadians. So the University of Montreal, U of T, even the University of Alberta and the U of C to some extent have an immense amount of intellectual capacity and the space. That is the natural center of excellence and the next foray which the U of C is spending a ton of time is the future of quantum. So I don't think we can be everything to everybody, I would say the deficiencies are how we take all this great effort, capital at the front end of the funnel and make sure that we can retain and grow our companies in the country and how can we also just pick a couple, very select opportunities that we can win on and do that really really well.
Runte:
When I listen to the two of you I feel so inspired and I think the rationale thought and proven science based on research and careful investment, there is a future for everybody, but when I turn on my television which I try never to do but I did in the hotel room last night, all I hear is vitriol and nobody wants to have that rational conversation and they are putting forward a point of view which is not reasonable. So how do we de-vitriolize the conversation? Sometimes I think it takes a tragedy to change people or it takes a great discovery to get everybody onboard but without tragedy and without discovering the secret of the universe, is there a way forward where we can get people to be good Canadians. Peter?
Tertzakian:
Yes. I really believe that because we're to the point now where I feel there is incredible fatigue with vitriol and incredible fatigue with polarization to the point where people are just starting to tune it out. People are also loathed to listen to people on a stage tell them what to do and I don't think they are doing that. The three of us Mark, we are just having a discussion, but you know, there are certainly a lot of people who will get on this stage and say you should do this, and you should do that because the world is falling apart and everybody else is wrong and I'm right. People are tired of that. So, I believe the solution is actually people just want to talk rationally, they want to get back to what you were calling critical thinking. The assumption by the loudest voices of the [inaudible] are that we are right and everybody else is dumb and stupid, but that's not actually the case. There are a lot of people that want to get into a conversation in a rationale way. So in answer to your question, I actually think its done one step at a time. It's a lot harder to control somebody in person then it is online. Or anything. I think convening in person around tables now that we can do that again, post pandemic, one step at a time is not the complete solution, but part of it. It is gather people together to participate in a conversation. To have a breakout for example at the end of the session and allow your audience which I can't see but allow them to have a conversation as a follow up, rather than just have speaker after speaker come on a stage and tell them what to do.
Runte:
Okay. That's really a great invited for me to ask Mark for kind of concluding remarks and let the room start talking. Even though you think we shouldn't, we do need advice from wise people like the two of you, you shouldn't just leave us alone to figure out. Mark do you have some guiding wisdom for the end?
Blackwell:
No, I mean, I, 100% agree with Peter and I always go back to this point. We kind of fight, even within our own province, Calgary versus Edmonton, Calgary versus Toronto. Quite frankly we are just too small of a country and too small of a province to having that debate, quite frankly. Bipartisan or not, you look at what other governments are doing around the world and not that this is the end all be all, but we look at the Reduction Inflation Act that was a very significant piece of legislature that was passed through and then you juxtapose that with collectively what we are doing in this county, and I fell to Peter's point, we no longer can have this argument, Alberta versus Ottawa and Ottawa versus BC because we are just too small of a country and collectively you look at the sum total of the parts, if these organizations don't connect the dots to one another, I mean we are absolutely dwarfed. $400 billion of capital through the IRA's getting deployed to clean energy, coupled with $394 billion of private incentives, $43 billion of consumer incentives for EV. These types of numbers are nationwide in the US and that is setting the bar and standard. So if we continue to work in silos, provinces, organizations, cities, we are not going to get anywhere. So to Peter's point, I give Peter an immense amount of credit, the amount of time that he spent in Ottawa as well as here, just trying to open the dialogue about these things because as a nation we need to kind of stand up versus organization, institution, city, province, I mean we are going to get nowhere. So that would be my take home message because I see as chaos and disorganized as it looks in the US, the transformation and you talk about pivotal events, the pandemic was a huge component to it. You look at onshore manufacturing and how fragile the food supply chain was in the US as example, the work around domestication and manufacturing in the US was caused by the pandemic. Digital transformation and CEO of Microsoft talked about this, two years of [inaudible] information in two months, the immense amount of catalyst that caused that the US is doing that Canada is starting to do, but we are just too small of a country to be fighting with one another and so there needs to be something that is easier said than done. But the ERA's are an example, about $800 million coupled with everything else that the federal government and other provinces are doing, I would just love to see us stand up together and kind of tackle this as a country versus as a province.
Runte:
Those are inspiring words in which we can conclude. I'm going to ask everybody in the audience please stay if you like and start having a conversation. For those of you who are having brunch in Newfoundland or just having your wake up orange juice in British Columbia, emailed us your questions and we will get back to you with some kind of response. I would like to thank you all for being here, but I would particularly like to thank Mark and Peter, you are both wise men and we are privileged to have you in this country.
Blackwell:
Thank you.
Featured speakers
Mark Blackwell is General Partner at the international venture fund, Builders VC. Before that, he was Product Manager at SolarWinds, which develops IT monitoring and network management tools. Blackwell joined SolarWinds when it acquired GNS3 Technologies, an enterprise networking startup where he was Co-Founder & Chief Operating Officer. He is a graduate of the University of Calgary, where he studied Finance. He is the current Board Chair of Opportunity Calgary Investment Fund, on the Board of Governors of the University of Calgary, Vice Chair of the University of Calgary Endowment Fund and Board Member of Emissions Reduction Alberta. | |
Peter Tertzakian is an economist, investment strategist, author, podcaster and dynamic public speaker on issues surrounding energy, economics and the environment. He has more than 35 years of experience in the business of energy, spanning all systems, from oil and gas to renewables. His holistic knowledge of finance, physics, innovation, and economics forms a foundation for his insights on how to think about sustainable energy solutions. A graduate of MIT’s Sloan School of Management, Tertzakian is currently a Managing Director of ARC Financial Corp., and the Founder of ARC Energy Research Institute. |
Moderator
Read Roseann O'Reilly Runte's bio |