EW 019 – How The Edmonton Region Is Winning By Being A Leader In Sustainable Hydrogen Development – with Brent Lakeman, Executive Director of the Edmonton Region Hydrogen Hub

Gordon Sheppard (00:00.942)
Brent, welcome to the show.

Brent Lakeman (00:03.864)
Thanks Gordon. Happy to be here.

Gordon Sheppard (00:05.816)
Well, I'm really glad to have you here because of your, I'm gonna say leadership and almost pioneering work in having a massive impact on something that will help my grandkids' kids for the work that you're doing in the specific area of changing the world, both technologically, economically, doing so many different things in the work that you're doing. But I'm gonna guess a bunch of people here that are listening don't know you just yet. So if you had to introduce yourself, what would you say?

Brent Lakeman (00:33.752)
Sure, yeah, I don't think people probably do know me, but I'm Brent Lakeman. I'm the executive director for the Edmonton Region Hydrogen Hub. So I've been involved in the clean energy sector for really my entire career, you know, going way back to some of the early days around.

how we plan to respond to the threat of global climate change. looking at technologies, looking at how we take advantage of the assets that we have, certainly in Alberta, to be able to respond and do it in a way that's very meaningful in comparison to other parts of the world where we've got some really great assets and hydrogen is certainly one of those and some of those other key enablers that we're really working to take advantage of. So, I spent most of my career in government, but now I'm more involved in economic development and work

from the municipal perspective on really trying to advance clean energy solutions.

Gordon Sheppard (01:23.342)
Why would you choose clean energy? My guess is with your pedigree, you could do lots of different things, but why choose this for the leadership role that you want to be in?

Brent Lakeman (01:32.27)
I mean, I've lived in Alberta my entire life and I think for me, know, energy is critical. I think energy is a very exciting topic as we look to, again, show that we're making steps to reduce the environmental footprint of our energy sector. I think there's a huge amount that's been done. I've been part of that in certain areas, things like carbon capture and storage. So for me, it's just been this ongoing evolution. I really like to use the word evolution because it's not necessarily, you know, one big step. It's this continued work that we need to be doing to

work with our industries, to work with our public sector, work with society at large to continue to show we can do things in an improved manner. And we've made lots of improvements and there's way more to come yet.

Gordon Sheppard (02:14.137)
And the hydrogen sort of in its infancy, do you know what I mean? In terms of like, if you had to describe the application of hydrogen and where it's at, I'd be unfair to say, know, percentage of the pie, that kind of thing. But how would you describe just sort of for the audience that doesn't understand the current state of hydrogen, hydrogen application so that they can get located themselves?

Brent Lakeman (02:37.196)
Yeah, no, that's a great question and I think in some ways hydrogen seems a little bit new but in other ways it's not new. We've been working with hydrogen in our province, in our region around the Edmonton for a long period of time. I mean it's fundamental to a lot of our key sectors like the refining sector, oil sands upgrading for example, the chemical sector. So we've been a large user of hydrogen around the Edmonton area where actually our region is the largest producer of hydrogen in Canada and people don't always

that and now we're kind of looking at new ways to produce it with less environmental impact and we're also a leader in that space but it's really now about how do we use it in new application areas going from these big industrial applications to things like transportation. How do we even look at our homes that potentially you know

areas where hydrogen can be used, airport environment, really opening up some new avenues here. And that's what I find the most exciting about our region is there's always something new going on, there's always some initiatives that we can help connect with and help also ensure they're on the right track and we can ensure they're successful over the longer term.

Gordon Sheppard (03:43.086)
Love it. And it's fun. I got to interview Rebecca from DTI, who is another big player in the hydrogen space, DTI Technologies. And they've got a hydrogen diesel engine that I'm going to say returned to base, like I know what I'm talking about. But it's one of those things where they thought it was going to be for long haul trucking. But based on fuel source location as an example, right now they're moving into other areas around. Like you mentioned, I think they actually have something going on at the airport where those snow machines or whatever it is, it has to sort of run around. They can use this dual.

fuel scenario so you know the hydrogen works but when it's not running they've got that diesel as a backup and they feel like it's sort of a really good approach for dealing with that kind of thing. I have to jump into one other area here and that is to explain the association that you are leading so that people really understand that as well. Go ahead.

Brent Lakeman (04:27.468)
Yeah, and also the Edmonton Region Hydrogen Hub. We've actually been around for four years. We were the first hydrogen hub. We call it a hub because it's really about building this ecosystem. think the idea with hydrogen is, yeah, for these big industrial applications, you can kind of have one hydrogen producer connected to one industry and things go ahead. Great, we've been doing that. Companies like Shell have been involved in this work for over 10 years now with clean hydrogen production. But as we look to new sectors like transportation, it's really about working as an ecosystem because just one player can't get it all done themselves.

It really is about how do we build demand for hydrogen? You know if you talk about transportation, it's the fleets that are moving or have the vehicles that are moving products. It's the product themselves. It's the refueling infrastructure. It's the mechanics. It's the insurance companies. It's everyone that really has to be playing together around this. So a hub is really this idea that how do we bring together parts of that ecosystem. So again, we've had the first hydrogen hub in Canada established really through the leadership of our Alberta Industrial Heartland and the mayors of the Heartland. So those regions are

let's say Fort Saskatchewan, Sturgeon County, Strathcona County, Edmonton that have really seen this opportunity because they can produce vast amounts of low carbon hydrogen but now we want to open up the markets for it so they really showed some visionary leadership over five years ago really that led to the establishment of the Edmonton Region Hydrogen Hub and we were at it really for the first four years to kind of build that vision for our regional ecosystem and now we're at the point where we let's get moving on it we got to sort of accelerate the activity.

a little bit. We're doing this because we are responding to the risk of climate change and you know we need to sort of see how hydrogen can play a critical role. Lots of things we can electrify but there's some industries where electrification doesn't always isn't as practical or even possible and certainly in Alberta our grid you know isn't fully renewable at this point in time so hydrogen is one of those key ways that some sectors will

will need to decarbonize their own activities through the use of hydrogen. So we want to get moving quickly on it. The hydrogen hub is a partnership amongst organizations like the UBIRD Industrial Heartland Association, like Edmonton Global, that's been my home base for the last four years. It's also an economic development organization that represents the Edmonton metropolitan region, the Edmonton International Airport. They've kind of come on board more recently to join the hydrogen hub because they're almost a hub within a hub. They're doing some really fascinating work and really exciting work to use hydrogen.

Brent Lakeman (06:51.364)
in a range of applications within that airport environment and the Alberta government through the Alberta Hydrogen Centre of Excellence, which is a program under Alberta Innovates coming on board as well. So we've really got all the key pieces here, all the key players that we need to be able to advance the hydrogen ecosystem here. So we're in the early days now, this next phase of the Edmonton Hydrogen Hub, so I'm happy to have this opportunity to take on that leadership role and really work with all the other partners that we have within the region, not just those four organizations I mentioned, but the company.

that you spoke of like diesel tech industries or other companies that are developing hydrogen refueling infrastructure just to name a couple.

Gordon Sheppard (07:29.817)
It's, can't imagine what's in your brain. I can hear the whole hub in your brain. Do you know what I mean? Like you've got, you know what I mean? You've met a million people. I've seen you lead panels. I've seen you get the word out and thump the message. You know what I mean? As you need to kind of go forward. I can't even imagine what a day in the life is like for you for all the different things that you do, including international exposure, the local exposure, changing hearts and minds for what it's going to take again to move this important.

piece of our energy piece forward. love it. I think that's just wonderful.

Brent Lakeman (08:01.326)
Yeah, it's a lot of fun, but I mean, think you're really hit on there's so much going on. you know, it's kind of an opportunity to stay connected into all of this fascinating work and to a certain extent be a bit of a spokesperson for it, be a facilitator, be an integrator. And I think that's what we need to be doing is not necessarily trying to design everything ourselves, but to recognize there's so much horsepower we have in this region and is how do we kind of, you know, connect this group that's taking on some action, this other group here that's doing some work on innovation and research and

create some marriages and really allow them to kind of turbo charge their efforts and go a little faster, a little stronger, a little more coordinated.

Gordon Sheppard (08:39.149)
And we know when that happens from an economic development perspective, literally billions will flow into the region. And also as these multipliers happen, these technologies are gonna go around the world. Again, another great sort of Alberta energy story in terms of taking it forward. At this moment in the podcast, I always like to say, if you had to pick one of your biggest wins in all this work that you've described, and thanks for doing an eloquent job of doing that, what would that win be and how would you describe it?

Brent Lakeman (09:05.058)
Yeah, I always have trouble picking one very specific win, but I think what I'm most excited about and when I go out and I speak to groups both locally and around the world is how they've recognized that Edmonton Region has really positioned itself as a real leader in this world, this area of hydrogen, and particularly around hydrogen utilization. So I guess the win for me is creating this awareness that what we have here is quite special. It came about through a lot of collaboration.

a lot of connectivity and you know really understanding you know and to a certain extent being able to highlight you know some of the great work going on with companies whether it's the real large player we've got some of the world's largest hydrogen producers here but we also have some innovators take coming in and advancing initiatives and it's really this diversity that we have of work whether it's in hydrogen use in the transportation sector that we've talked about but also hydrogen use in in the building sector companies like Atco doing some really exciting work.

Again, some of the largest net zero clean energy, clean hydrogen production projects in the world taking place here because we've got this carbon capture and storage assets that have been developed as well over the past 10 years. So I think it's just created this awareness and when we go out and to events we get people talking to me to say, yeah Edmonton is the most exciting hydrogen jurisdiction in the world right now in some cases. So I hear that and I really I'm proud of that message that's gotten out there now and I think we've had something to do with

to ensure that the world knows more about what Alberta is doing and particularly what the Edmonton region is doing around hydrogen.

Gordon Sheppard (10:41.901)
can hear that the win in all of that, and again, so many different things to talk about in there, but this idea is you've built up the awareness to let people know that Edmonton is the place to be for hydrogen in all the different aspects that you've been talking about. Congratulations. That's a lot of heavy lifting. That's a lot of, I can't imagine the number of meetings or the times you've had to repeat the message from your point of view as you've sort of gone along the way. What's fun for me now is I jump into what I call the anatomy of a win, just to really kind of go a bit deeper to understand this. And this is where we get into the strategy, the work plan.

the people, operations and results behind the wind that we're talking about. To build awareness, I heard it. You said five years ago, there was a stakeholder group. There were some mayors involved. There's people kind of getting going to build the hydrogen hub to kind of get that going. Not that we need to, you can go back in the history, but I'm just gonna pick it up about five years ago. There's something about the strategy as in the vision, the goals, the values that kind of go into that. Any highlights from the strategy for building up to this moment?

Brent Lakeman (11:37.762)
Well, I going back to that point, you know, again, I think it was groups that came together to see this opportunity. So I'll give lots of credit to the Alberta Industrial Heartland Association, which is that group where we have the mayors from those five municipalities that make up the Alberta Industrial Heartland that really saw this opportunity. But they also work closely with a group called the Transition Accelerator. And that organization really brought some, I'll call it academic credibility to the argument to say, okay, great, you've got this asset here and here's what it could look like. Here's how it could unfold.

Now obviously things don't always unfold exactly what you think it's going to look like five years ago and you need to be quite dynamic and flexible and adapt your actions. But it was really that starting point that said, yeah, there's something here, nobody else in Canada has what we have. Let's make this work when we hear about a Canadian hydrogen strategy that talks about a $100 billion economic impact and that came out shortly after that. We're thinking, well, boy, a lot of that should really be coming back to this region because we already produce most

of the hydrogen in Canada and we are the home to some of these leading projects to produce more clean hydrogen. But now it's about the use cases. So if that use of hydrogen is going to happen, it's probably also going to happen where you're producing it. I think we saw this economic opportunity and we could convince, you know, whether it's federal government organizations, provincial government organizations, other municipal organizations and stakeholders from across industry and society at large to say, yeah, this is a huge opportunity. We only get this

coming along so many times, like the oil sands came around, you know, well, it started in 1960s, actually it started in the 1920s, but we really saw that activity, you know, proceed more rapidly, let's say after the 1990s, 2000s when we saw significant investments. So we can see something similar here as we look to support the decarbonization efforts or the climate change efforts from a number of industries, that that should be really starting in the Edmonton region.

consensus around that and then when we talk to all the key players they're like yeah Edmonton is the best place to start so let's get moving on. So we had that leadership that really recognized it now it's about making it operational so again for a lot of our work at both Edmonton Global, the Industrial Heartland Association, it was getting that message out so when we're talking to investors they understand that okay I didn't really know much about Edmonton now I do you are you know there is some real key enablers that you have that we don't have anywhere else whether it's the

Brent Lakeman (14:07.532)
the low-cost natural gas, we've got the carbon capture and storage geology, we've got the workforce, we've got the experience in doing this that no one else has had, we've got the investments in innovation that were really setting us very nicely. So now we get this marriage again of these large-scale projects with new innovators coming in to always show we're going to be kind of moving it forward and what we thought would, you four years ago we've actually exceeded that in many, many ways. We thought success would look like, you know, X and we found out it's

actually double X, triple X, because we've been able to show there's way more going on than we could realize and it's kind of lifting up that hood fairly often and saying okay what's really going on in the region we we you know we can't just think it's going to designed you know on paper here's the strategy let's execute the strategy I recognize we need that but in a very dynamic adaptable area it's about engaging on an ongoing basis to make sure we really understand what's going on.

Gordon Sheppard (15:01.379)
So it really is sort of constant iteration in a sense. And again, the next meeting that you go to with, I'm gonna say a site selector or an international investor or whatever those things are, or the next one you go to with a local person or you pick up that thing, you're stitching together this win, right? And we hear the strategy has economic benefits, it has these environmental benefits, it has sort of company goal benefits that are in there for the right companies as well.

Brent Lakeman (15:05.432)
That's right.

Gordon Sheppard (15:26.243)
The strategy part is really, really clear. And again, it started and then it's continuing on this rolling format. The second step in the Anatomy of Wind is to talk about a work plan. And that's this idea, if we have a strategy, we gotta kind of roll it out. So there's a first moment where there's a meeting, like say five years ago, if we pick up that part of the story, some people get together at certain moments and they start to have it happen along the way. But then there's other milestones along the way. If we look at a timeline down the road, any significant milestones, I'm gonna say, maybe it's the formation of your organization or.

that type of thing that you could point out that contribute towards this win.

Brent Lakeman (16:00.428)
Yeah, I think we spent a lot of time in our hydrogen ecosystem, our hydrogen hub, and the transportation sector. So we've talked a bit about that. So we perceived early on, maybe three, four years ago, that we had all this work going on at the municipal side. Our municipality is exploring hydrogen.

vehicles, City of Edmonton, Strathcona County looking at hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, also looking at the conversions of existing vehicles. We saw the airport taking on work on its own fleet of vehicles. We saw the commercial sector looking at all types of activities for hydrogen fuel cell vehicles and dual fuel. So we kind of recognize that's great. We've got all these separate initiatives, but let's kind of put a bit of an umbrella over top of that. So we launched something called the 5,000 hydrogen vehicle challenge. Audacious goal, we're kind of at zero.

vehicles and we're a long way away from 5,000 vehicles but it's really to demonstrate to the market, the outside of Alberta market to say we're serious about this. We think we can be major players here. We've got municipalities that themselves have thousands of vehicles and they love to convert these but it requires certain conditions to be in place. We've got the commercial transportation sector interested. We've got commercial charter bus lines very interested in this. We've got the airport. So when you start to add all that up it's like yeah we can actually be a jurisdiction that can

and get to thousands of vehicles over a period of time. But it will take time, it will take a concerted effort. So then we have to look at each of those segments. So we're doing some really exciting work right now to look at the commercial transportation sector and involved in, or we've launched something called the Western Canadian Hydrogen Corridors Initiative, recognizing we have to work closely with other hydrogen ecosystems. If we're going to have trucks on the road going from Edmonton to Calgary, Edmonton to Prince George, Edmonton all the way to Prince Rupert, Edmonton to Fort McMurray, that's a larger...

ecosystem that has to be created. So what steps need to be in place to allow that to proceed. So again we need a work plan that kind of drills down into each one of those segments. The airport will have its own work plan. We'll have the municipalities with their work plan and then we start to see some common threads. Maybe we can share work on the training. Maybe we can share work on some of that infrastructure that's going to be required and if the municipalities can create some infrastructure for themselves, who knows maybe that will also be valuable for the commercial players.

Gordon Sheppard (17:54.883)
So we can hear, I, yeah.

Gordon Sheppard (18:16.281)
I just want to split your head open and see this roadmap that's in there. It's so wonderful to hear again the consolidation. You're like a lightning rod for all of it because you've got the history, you've got the understanding of the strategy, you're laying out the work plan pieces, which again, in that constant evolution, you're getting feedback, which then feeds into that, which then feeds the next thing. What struck me about talking with Rebecca was how many different engines there are out there that could use this. I thought, maybe it's a big truck.

going down highway too, but actually it had to do with again sort of an airport snowplow. It could be an engine running a, I don't know, a generator or somebody. There's all these different applications that you're to get into. And I can't wait a year from now, two years from now to hear about those things as you go towards that 5,000 something challenge and how nice for Edmonton to be so proud and the region to be so proud of all these efforts that you're describing as we go forward. So we've got a good feel for the strategy.

We understand the work plan is iterative again, but we've got these moments where we're in transportation, but we're gonna fan out. There's gonna be other moments along that timeline as we kind of go forward. There's always people involved in any win. How would you describe kind of the key players and their attitudes in getting this win?

Brent Lakeman (19:27.31)
Yeah, well, I mean, think again, there's a...

huge number of players involved, whether we're starting with, you know, again, the mayors have got things going and, you know, wanting to remain involved in this, they've really got something that they've created. And now what's the appropriate role moving forward, you know, all the way down to, you know, the mechanics that, you know, want to look at the future and say, well, yeah, I'm a diesel mechanic. I don't know if those vehicles will be the right ones down the road. I hear about battery technologies. What about hydrogen technologies? So I think there's this, you know, incredible number of players that you need to be connecting with. And I think what I've found most

interesting is you yeah you can connect with those key players that are building hydrogen production plants or you know some of the ones bringing in some of the vehicles but I always find the exciting point is in these these intersection points or where you get a different set of players so you know companies involved in in manufacturing of let's say oil and gas equipment and they're like well I've been doing this for a long time and you know that that market's gonna still be strong but let's kind of look at some pivoting into some new areas so we see opportunities for companies that have been manufacturing

manufacturing widgets for oil and gas to now shift into that world of hydrogen and see some huge opportunities there. We've to be mindful it's the early days so you know not to create the expectation that something's going to be just around the corner but if you're beginning to think about this you know you have to plan you know several years ahead to get that infrastructure in place to get the trading in place so I think those are the key people I like to continue to connect with not the obvious ones but kind of the less obvious ones that will play an important role and as we need to get public support for this moving

forward. You know, it's not just those advocates for hydrogen, it's the others that can see some benefits around this, so that value add piece. So I think that's the really exciting part of the work of the hydrogen hub is connecting into new segments. And maybe you haven't really heard that much about it, but it's gonna be really critical that they're on board because, you know, even things like first responders, we've been doing some work with the first responder community to say, you know, we don't want the first responders to feel like something's unsafe. So we have to work with them really early on in these projects to get these, whether it's vehicles.

Brent Lakeman (21:29.686)
on the road or know pilot projects underway. So I think there's all of these different segments and beginning to map those out in a little more detail. So yeah so I think those are the types of people I like to be engaging with but there's no end to who's part of this story.

Gordon Sheppard (21:43.332)
They know, no end to all the different people that we could be talking about that are contributing to this story. When you meet it, I love this. So yes, we have the obvious ones, right? So the supporters you've talked about, there's that kind of thing. You're out there shaking hands and kissing babies and doing your thing, you know, along the way. The, when you run up against somebody who's like, well, what's hydrogen? How do you help them in a sentence or two to start to make the mental shift to all the opportunities that you've just talked about? Cause again, there's part of the win is your messaging.

So what's, again, just a few sentences that you would say that mechanic, say to that new business owner, say to that international investor, what are a few sentences there?

Brent Lakeman (22:22.138)
Yeah, I used the word evolution earlier on. I'd kind of come back to that and say, know, hydrogen just plays a role in the evolution of our energy system. So it's finding ways to still have that energy, but we've kind of decarbonized it. So in some cases, it's through technologies like carbon capture and storage that allows us to convert that natural gas, you know, into or the natural gas becomes the hydrogen. And then as we kind of produce that hydrogen, we're taking that carbon and we're actually, you know, dealing with that through carbon capture and storage. There's other technologies as well. That's not the only one.

we've got renewable energy technologies that can play a key role in hydrogen as well. So again, I see it as this continued way to produce energy and reducing the environmental impacts in ways that we're actually fairly familiar with already because we've been working with hydrogen, like I say, for 50, 60 years around here. So we're just continuing to show we're making it less carbon intensive. We've already made great progress. This is going to allow us to continue on. And it's also going to allow us to work with some key sectors and maybe even attract some

of these sectors to our region because what we're looking at is things like hydrogen are not always the easiest to move around. It takes a lot of energy to move hydrogen. You might be able to attract certain industries to your region because you can produce the hydrogen locally and rather than trying to move it out you could actually bring some of those industries here. So we're beginning to have a look at that as well and that can be quite exciting when you can see this more diversification bringing new economic development and activities into the region as well.

Gordon Sheppard (23:49.018)
I really appreciated your storytelling of how the oil sands got going. again, you're talking about going through those pioneering steps in a sense. And there's profits in them, their hills. Do you know what mean? There's profitability in what you're talking about as well. And that's already being demonstrated. as more people gain, with your wind continuing, more people gain the awareness. So we've talked about the strategy, the work plan, people we got in there as well. Operationally, it takes a lot to get messaging out about helping people to understand that.

Edmonton is a great, Edmonton and area is a great place to come and do this type of work. And this is where the exciting thing is. Did you spend a jillion dollars on marketing? Like, do you run around every conference in the world? Do you, whatever, what are some of the operational highlights that it takes to get this kind of messaging out?

Brent Lakeman (24:33.998)
Well, think people know I do get out to a number of events, but that's really because we have great support from our governments through some of the programs that they have in place that allow them to support trade and investment activities, whether it's through the Alberta government or the federal government. So having those partners around is great. We want to prioritize, where do we actually get that message out? Where are we hitting the right receptor targets? But I'm going to use an example of, again, four years ago, we were beginning to think, well, wouldn't it be wonderful if we could show up at this big international

conference and get our message out. And we kind of pivoted very quickly and we thought well why don't we actually bring a conference to Edmonton and not just one that's going to happen every you know 10 years but an annual conference. you know four years ago we we were approaching a conference organizer and it's led to the Canadian Hydrogen Convention which is what we understand it to be the largest pure play hydrogen conference in North America and you know four years ago we were thinking let's just get out to an event and maybe attract one

that's going to show up and rotate around the world. But now we have a permanent event and we get this audience that will continue to come to Edmonton year in and year out to learn about what's happening, not just here, but across Canada and internationally with really attendees from every continent essentially coming into our region to learn about what's happening here, get their message out, create some connectivity. So again, back to that nimble adaptation. We weren't even thinking this four years ago, but it's become a real

key part of our ecosystem is knowing that you we're going to have a big event, going to have some major announcements, we get the world's biggest companies coming here, we get you know the Japanese you know major multinationals that are all advancing hydrogen or from Korea or from Europe or from the United States. So it's really positioned us as a way we can get our message out in probably a much I guess lower cost manner than trying to go out to every event around the world and speak. Now they're coming to us instead.

Gordon Sheppard (26:30.777)
Congratulations. It takes an enormous amount of effort. And I walked through the booths at that convention this year and it was serious. Like it's funny when you think about the players that were in there, multinationals from all around, you can always tell by the booth sizes and booth investments who's coming to play. And it was very serious business. I ran into sort of folks that were in there from Ireland. I know that was a personal experience that I They're they're coming to...

bring their companies over here. So that was just one example of my own personal experience there. So that was, it was a great event and I was just amazed at how many.

Brent Lakeman (27:00.799)
I'm good.

I'm just going to give you a couple of really cool examples that I've got. Two years ago we had the president of Poland that came in. You don't often get a president of a country coming to your conference, but they saw this region as being really important, strategically important between Poland and Canada at that time. Then the same year we had the chairman of one of the major companies working on hydrogen, Kawasaki Heavy Industries. You don't often get the chairman or the president of these companies. Then when you run into them again, they remember being at that event. They remember what's going on in this

So, you know, there's no better advertising than getting some of these key leaders coming in and talking about what they're doing and learning about what we're doing.

Gordon Sheppard (27:40.74)
Well, congratulations on the convention being just one aspect of all the different things. And again, if we could talk for four hours, we'd hear the rest, but we don't maybe have that amount of time right now. We said strategy, work plan, people, operations. Finally, there's results. If you had to sort of look at, you know, up to this moment in time for the win that you've talked about, how would you measure qualitatively, quantitatively the results up to this time?

Brent Lakeman (28:01.134)
you

Yeah, and think that's probably the hardest one in some respects because these are long-term plays. So I have my days where it's like, I'm not getting the results I'm looking for. I was hoping to see this. It just hasn't come about. And we don't have the ability to control everything. again, what we can measure is what we can do. So we can make those interactions. again, I think the results from our point of view are those touch points, is being able to get some information out. It's the early days of our next iteration of the hydrogen hub.

types of things I'm doing today with you actually that that's one of our our metrics is getting this message out to different audiences not just the usual suspects but different players so we're going to continue to do that so I think you know the measurements for me is going to be those touch points that we have with local companies with international players with the public at large as well again I think there's you know we can't underestimate the importance of connecting with the public you can do everything you want with you know just the specialist community but if you don't have the public really understanding what you're up to that's going to

shoot you in the foot at some point. So you know those are the types of things that we're trying to measure with the Edmonton Region Hydrogen Hub and then you know looking at some new information that we want to get out as well to make sure we're continuing to show progress. You know that's really important right now because again I think we hear different things about hydrogen in some areas maybe things aren't moving quite as quickly as we would like it to be for lots of different reasons but there is continued progress and it's getting that message out so I think you know being able to continue to demonstrate that there's really world-leading things happening

happening here, whether it's the innovations taking place at our universities. We've got a University of Alberta now that's launched a brand new hydrogen center themselves. So, you know, that alone is going to stimulate so much more activity. So it's being able to continue to be linked into these transformational initiatives.

Gordon Sheppard (29:48.42)
It sounds modest what you're talking about, honestly, because again, that laundry list of what you've already mentioned, presidents from countries, presidents from companies, international investment. And by the way, this sounds very much like economic development, right? So it's that sort of thankless day by day, but then suddenly it's a couple of years in and there's billions of dollars showing up or new technologies going out the door or reputation having been built. So that's wonderful to hear that kind of whole story.

And you know, if you had to sort of put a summary sentence on this moment in time and maybe what you're seeing in the future, what would that be just sort of as we get towards the end of our conversation?

Brent Lakeman (30:22.99)
Yeah, well I think the message is we've come a long way in the four years since we really started this journey, maybe five years in some cases, but we've come an incredibly long way, but we're going to be going significantly farther over the next five years as well as we continue to create these enabling conditions to allow us to really accelerate. So we always use the word accelerate. It's going from the single digit applications, two vehicles, five vehicles, nine vehicles, into the 20s and 30s.

and 50s and that's just in transportation but as we look at stationary applications, as we look at new industries that are coming in to locate, we're still in those early days and things are really going to accelerate rapidly but it's all because we have to work together, we have to work in partnership, we need governments understanding what the opportunities look like and what role they can potentially play as well.

Gordon Sheppard (31:13.197)
And it strikes me that decarbonize is a good thing. And I know we're in our geopolitical realities right now as we ebb and flow through those things. There is a massive future in this in a profitable way that suits the same, I'm gonna say profit motive in general that will be not only a profit contributor, a help the world contributor kind of going forward. Is that fair?

Brent Lakeman (31:37.612)
Yeah, no, definitely. You know, I think we need to find ways to, you know, look at new business models, new ways of doing business in some areas. You know, again, hydrogen's been starting out in those industrial applications and that's really the, you know, what we've learned and that's critical moving ahead. If you don't have this industrial base, it's kind of hard to develop your hydrogen ecosystem without what we call the off take that you get from big industry wanting to use that hydrogen. But as we now look at those other areas, that's where it gets a lot more difficult and that's where it's really all about coordination. It's around

collaboration, new models as well. So I think we're trying to show that, you know, hydrogen will play a really critical role in some key sectors. Some jurisdictions around the world have more opportunities than others. And again, that comes back to our region that, you know, if any region should be able to make this happen, it's our region. So we want to set an example. We want to be kind of those early movers. And that will is going to help everybody else down the road and get those costs down because there are significant costs around this technology. But it's about

creating those economies of scale and those call it the the coalition of the willing the early movers that really see some huge opportunities to be at the front of the parade rather than at the end of the

Gordon Sheppard (32:48.025)
Well, and how nice that you're in there helping to lead the parade. Congratulations on the work that you do and the amount of effort that it takes to be in the trenches in that pioneering moment of bringing this sort of, I'm gonna say newer from my perspective. I know you said it's 60 years old, but that newer sort of thing that's gonna roll out for the right reasons over, I'm gonna say a hundred years or more, but you're in those early days of getting that to happen in the right way. Well, just Brent, thank you so much for being on the show.

Brent Lakeman (33:13.56)
Well thank you for having me. I really appreciate the ability to get this message out to again maybe a different audience than we typically speak with so I'd be more than happy to follow up and you can learn more about our hydrogen hub at hydrogen.ca. That's the new website for the Edmonton region hydrogen hub. So lots of information there and you can certainly learn more about what's going on within our ecosystem.

Gordon Sheppard (33:34.957)
Hydrogen.ca, obviously a valuable place to start. I'm sure people are gonna get a chance to reach out to you as well when they hear this. Thank you so much.

Brent Lakeman (33:42.35)
Thank you, Gordon. Bye bye.