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(gentle upbeat music)
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I'm here today with Jonathan Wilkinson
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Minister of Environment and Climate Change for Canada.
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We are very grateful that you are spending time with us today
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,Jonathan.
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Thank you very much.
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Canada earned praise for promising
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to legislate the 2050 deadline
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for net zero carbon emissions.
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What are the key policy changes
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that you have been able to implement
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or are planning to implement to support this pledge?
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The first is we pledged to enhance our target for 2030,
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and of course Canada has done a lot of work
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over the last few years to address
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some of the key sources of emissions.
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But we still were in a position
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where we had a gap to meet the target that we currently have.
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We've said that we understand the urgency
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and the need to enhance ambition
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and we will be bringing forward in the very near term
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an enhanced climate plan that will actually show Canadians
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how we will not only meet our target but exceed it.
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That obviously is important in terms of taking
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a big step towards net-zero by 2050
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but we also promise two additional things
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with respect to 2050.
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One was to stand up an expert advisory panel
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on the pathways to 2050.
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Of course, as you will appreciate,
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it will often be different country by country
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and certainly the pathways are different sector by sector.
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And we promise to legislate in the same way
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that the United Kingdom and New Zealand have done,
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which is to put in place binding five-year targets
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that allow us to have a legislated pathway to 2050.
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That's, of course, important as a forcing function for us.
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But it's also a forcing function for all future governments
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in terms of being able to be transparent with Canadians
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as to how we are going to meet the targets
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that science tells us we must.
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How challenging has it been from your perspective
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to balance economic growth concerns
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with decarbonization targets
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when discussing topics around recovery?
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Have you been able to observe any positive impact yet
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from the green stimulus spending?
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We continue to be very focused on the pandemic,
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but we are in the process of developing
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what I refer to as the enhanced climate plan.
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And from my perspective, that is the economic plan.
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It is about short-term initiatives
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that will stimulate employment,
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such as things like building retrofits
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and infrastructure, investments,
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and building out hydrogen or electric vehicle infrastructure.
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All of those things create an immediate stimulus
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in terms of jobs and economic opportunity.
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But it's also about a longterm vision
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around sectors that we need to transform.
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We have seen in our own studies and engagements
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with governments that some key areas are critical, such as
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ensuring the economic recovery is green. For example,
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prioritizing sustainability and stimulus and
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what's sometimes called green strings.
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For example, direct support for zero emissions technologies and
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conditional support, for instance of the aviation industries
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focusing on green job creation.
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Did you find in your own experience
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that these topics were central
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to the green recovery discussion?
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They've been very central for us.
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And then of course, we also looked around the world
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at some of the things that were being done
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in other countries. Actually, some of your colleagues
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at Boston Consulting Group helped us with that,
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in terms of looking at some of the things
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that were being considered
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or implemented in other jurisdictions.
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We also tried to think about
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how we embed some of these climate related objectives
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into the programming that we brought forward.
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So for example, in some of the green strings kinds of ideas,
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we brought forward a financing mechanism
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for large corporations that included
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climate disclosure related requirements.
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We brought forward a couple of different plans
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with respect to, for example, methane reductions
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from the oil and gas sector, where we are regulating that
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but during this period, we actually provided funding
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to enable the implementation and the job creation.
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Are you planning for specific re-skilling initiatives?
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Yeah, it's certainly something that we are looking at
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and working on.
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We recognize that both in the short term and certainly in the long-term,
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there are areas where we are going have to think
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about re-skilling. The most obvious one is in coal.
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We've made a commitment to phase out
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coal fire power generation.
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I think in particular, it's a little bit different
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in this downturn or this pandemic
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because of the fact that the people
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that have been most disproportionately affected
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tend to be young people and women,
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and many of the jobs that are being created
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are in areas like trades or in engineering
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and those kinds of applications,
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which traditionally have have been male dominated. So we need to be thinking about
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how we actually think about skills training
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and those kinds of things on a go forward basis.
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More generally, I think we need to think about
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re-skilling in the context of the kind of economy
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we foresee developing over the next few decades
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as the world moves very much towards
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a much lower carbon future.
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Based on our analysis, switching a little bit the topics
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we see that 70 to 80% of the global emissions
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in a two degree Celsius path
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can be reduced through existing technologies. But the remaining 20 to 30% will require innovation
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and technology development around carbon capture,
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synthetic fuels and other clean technologies.
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How do you see Canada realizing this vision
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and closing the innovation gap?
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So this is an issue that very close to my heart.
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Before I decided to enter politics five years ago,
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I actually was a CEO in the clean technology space
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here in Canada with a number of different companies
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for, gosh, I was in the sector for 20 years.
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So, a lot of the technology that we need to
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make the emissions progress that we must make exist today
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and it is largely an issue about deployment.
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Sometimes it's an issue about cost,
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but it's largely an issue about deployment. And that's really positive.
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It's not like we have to invent a silver bullet every day
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for the next 10 years in order to actually
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make the progress we need to make.
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But certainly there are areas
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where we must make further progress.
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I think that we know where those are,
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and there has been a lot of progress made.
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So for example, in carbon capture and storage
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there are certainly operating facilities
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around the world, including here in Canada.
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The biggest challenge is to develop technology
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that actually can do this at a cost
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that actually will make sense.
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I think that there's a lot of interest in hydrogen. Right now, the issue there is
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how do you actually drive costs for green hydrogen?
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And are there pathways to actually extracting hydrogen
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from existing fossil resources without carbon,
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so blue hydrogen?
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There's an enormous amount of work
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that needs to get done there.
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And there are a few other areas, obviously. But we in Canada have started with kind of looking at
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the early stage, some of the supports
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that we need to provide to the entrepreneur
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that comes forward with an idea
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to help to start evolving the idea
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and then to building a company. We've actually done that pretty well in the past. But the piece in Canada where we have stumbled is
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the commercialization of technology,
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taking a company from 50 people to 500 people.
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And that is an area where we spent a lot of time
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thinking about how do we actually create assistance
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from the government that will enable
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some of the kinds of activities that we would like to see.
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Obviously, the government can't do everything
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but it's about trying to figure out
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where those market failures are.
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Here in Canada, it's often about getting the first
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or the second or the third commercial deployment,
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where there is still risk in the technology.
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And so it's about thinking about how the government can assist with some of the risk that relates there
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to help us to actually incent folks to be early adopters.
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How can the government best support the creation
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and mobilization of public-private coalitions
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to act positively?
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Obviously tax mechanisms can be a useful way
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for drawing in private sector capital.
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Like there's something in the United States called the Q45,
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which relates to carbon capture and storage. It has actually incented a fair bit of activity
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in that space. But also more broadly
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tools that either enable private sector investment
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or partnership with government.
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So we created the Infrastructure Bank.
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One of the things that the Infrastructure Bank
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has announced recently that it's going to be doing
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is essentially creating a financing mechanism
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where commercial building owners can invest in deep retrofits, and essentially the Infrastructure Bank
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will take on part of that
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and the savings associated with energy reduction
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and energy use reduction will actually pay back the bank.
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For the early adopters of particularly larger scale implementations of technology,
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the government can partner by either co-investing
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or potentially being willing
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to take some of the technology risk on board.
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And so, we're looking at all of those things
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because we recognize that the government
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cannot do this alone.
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It does not have the fiscal capacity
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to make this transition happen on its own. We must actually have the private sector involved.
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So thank you very much Jonathan,
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it was a great opportunity speaking with you.
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We really appreciate it.
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Thank you very much.
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Great, thank you very much.
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(gentle upbeat music)