Power Struggle
Improving the energy dialogue in Canada (and beyond) through honest, non-partisan, and fact- based conversations.
The energy conversation is personal: it’s in our homes, in our hands, and now, it’s in our ears. Power Struggle invites you to listen in on honest, non-partisan, and fact-based conversations between host Stewart Muir and the leaders and thinkers designing modern energy.
Watch videos at https://www.youtube.com/@PowerStrugglePod
Power Struggle
Energy, Innovation, and Inclusion // Margareta Dovgal
Margareta is the Managing Director of Resource Works. She’s a passionate advocate for pragmatic natural resource policy with a passion for technology, innovation, and Indigenous economic development. Spending time in the UK, the UAE, and Canada shaped her insights on modern energy.
In this episode we dive into:
- Is Canada marginalizing itself in the global conversation?
- Why value differences are important to consider when making policy decisions and changes
- The question that the UAE is obsessed with right now
- Is decolonization possible?
- How to think about polling
- Have we reached peak oil?
- Is the future bright? Or just aspirational?
- Carbon capture as a potential solution to the real and present challenge of climate change?
From innovative technology solutions to the importance of effective leadership, this episode offers a comprehensive exploration of the dynamic intersection between energy innovation, cultural insights, and economic policy. We discuss what it takes to drive meaningful progress in today's rapidly changing world.
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🎧 For audio versions of our podcast visit powerstruggle.ca and listen on the go in your favourite podcast app!
Video available on Power Struggle’s YouTube! https://www.youtube.com/@PowerStrugglePod
Hello, I'm S Muir and welcome to Power Struggle. Today I'm with Margareta Dovgal. She's a dynamic leader in the energy and resource sector, a longtime political organizer at all levels of government, and she has worked on over a dozen campaigns since her start in youth politics at the University of British Columbia. As the event lead for the Indigenous Partnerships Success Showcase in 2022, 2023, and 2024, margarita has worked to foster meaningful and sustainable partnerships between Indigenous communities and corporate Canada, helping to create true economic reconciliation. In 2020, she played a pivotal role in convening the Task Force for Real Jobs, real Recovery, a groundbreaking coalition of labour industry and Indigenous groups dedicated to driving Canada's post-COVID-19 economic recovery. Margareta holds a Master of Public Administration in Energy Technology and Climate Policy from the University College London, where she also led an international postgraduate consulting project for the Prime Minister's Office of the United Arab Emirates, offering insights on financial regulation, consumer debt and digital government. Beyond her professional endeavors, margareta is a housing debt and digital government. Beyond her professional endeavors, margareta is a housing advocate and she serves as a member of the Renters Advisory Committee for the City of Vancouver, british Columbia. And, of course, margareta serves as the Managing Director of ResourceWorks.
Stewart Muir:That's how I know her. We're starting a new project, power Struggle. That is actually not our first rodeo, not my first rodeo and podcast. This is third or fourth round. The first one we did we did together right, that's right Cause and effect. Cause and effect. It was pretty good fun. How many episodes of that do we do? I forget now.
Margareta Dovgal:It was like 10 or 20. I'd say at least 10. 10.
Stewart Muir:That's American Definitely a little, I'd say at least 10.
Margareta Dovgal:10, yeah, that's my recollection, definitely A little bit of a melange of everything that's going on in energy and climate more broadly in Canada and globally.
Stewart Muir:Yeah, those episodes are still out there, and I'll run across people now who'll say, oh, I saw your podcast. I'm thinking well, which one? Because we do have a few out there, but that's often the one that they'll reference because they've seen some interview and it's actually still good stuff. I really wanted to have you on early on, because I think we have some things we really disagree on, but always seem to work it out, and I think that's a thing that's missing in a lot of the discourse we see out there. People can be so entrenched in positions and there's so many things that drive us into our foxholes, and the deeper you dig yourself in, the harder it is to get out. I'd just like to go back to the start of the working relationship we had, because at the time you were at UBC. What's your memory of how we met?
Margareta Dovgal:I seem to recall it was a partisan club on campus and I think it was BC Liberals at the time, a party that unfortunately doesn't exist anymore but had a good run, definitely at least here in BC, and certainly hope there's a future for liberals in this province to have their voices heard as well. But going back a decade now, you know I started out as a volunteer there. I spent a good amount of time involving myself in a pretty broad range of campus activism. I think I was part of founding the Feminist Club at UBC and you know I met a really broad range of people before I started getting more involved in politics. And that was also around the time that you came to speak to a group of us about just the foundational challenges BC and Canada was facing in getting infrastructure built. You know ResourceWorks came out of and you know this very well, Stewart,, but others might not something called the Market Access Project. It was a recognition that getting Canadian-produced natural resource goods to market was getting more difficult. There was a huge interest in seeing trans-Britain expansion built across the country, a huge amount of community investment opportunity tied up in it, and I seem to recall that's what you spoke about, but it really inspired me. I was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and keen to get out there into the world talk about all the issues that I felt were critically important. I still think they are. It's income inequality, that's, you know, fundamental questions about how we live together in a multicultural society and have good outcomes for people, how we get access to healthcare, how we get homes built.
Margareta Dovgal:And there was something in what you shared when you came to speak on campus. You gave us a very broad picture about how Canadian resource development, specifically oil and gas, ties into economic prosperity, how it ties into some of the opportunities Canada has to support our allies and part of creating sustainable and secure geopolitical setups for Canada and our allies. But there was something about it that was a fresh and novel perspective that I just hadn't heard before. It's actually, I would say, something that tends to be missing in certain university contexts. Maybe it was just the nature of the program I was in.
Margareta Dovgal:I was a humanities student, you know, spent a little bit of time thinking I was going to study archaeology, and maybe this is something that students in the School of Business were learning. But understanding that, hey, these questions that I had about how do people have a better life? How do we drive towards a more equitable and fair future? Seeing prospective answers at least hints of potential answers within pragmatic analysis of why the world needs energy and why Canada has an opportunity, really lit a fire in me, and that prompted me to reach out to you and start doing a little bit of volunteering work, which turned into more opportunities for career development. And, yeah, look where I am now. I spend day in and day out a lot of the time talking about energy issues and specifically where Canada can go in serving those needs globally.
Stewart Muir:And you've become a real influencer. But before you became the powerhouse you are today, you took a big risk you left little old Vancouver and you moved off to the United Kingdom to study. So tell us about why you needed to make that move.
Margareta Dovgal:I realized something, I think, on an intuitive level, rather than necessarily a clear-cut quantitative analysis of what my future held. I certainly wasn't looking at things like, well, what are my prospective lifetime earnings or what types of practice I actually want to do. You know subject matter, about energy and climate. It appealed to me. There was a kernel of hey, this is important, this is really really important. And I was immediately struck, you know, when you and I first started interacting, by this idea that that wasn't being talked about.
Margareta Dovgal:There was a whole world out there, entire global economy, functioning on products, energy products that are a really big part of why Canada is as wealthy as it is, and it felt to me like a bit of a eureka moment. Wait a minute, this is what it's about. I need to get into this a little bit more and, coincidentally, it was also really great for me to build valuable skills. You know you brought me on to do research, to write policy briefs to. You know, travel different places, help put on events, and that, I think, inspired me to see what a more academically focused approach to these issues could look like. I think I knew from the outset, early in university, that I wanted to do something as if related to public policy. It's always been a passion of mine, but putting the fine focus that hates energy and climate and technology policy that I want to study really came out of these interactions with ResourceWorks early on in my professional career.
Stewart Muir:So you show up in London and you're at this prestigious program at the University College of London. How did this experience transform your views on energy?
Margareta Dovgal:Well, I think maybe it's just worth saying you know, when we're here in Canada and you're talking to people who are involved in politics and government and business, there's almost like a prestige factor tied up in the idea of a master's degree from a UK institution and we see that as sort of a professional credentialing and attainment, I think in sort of large and inflated sense, like, oh you know, it's a thing that is done, and lots of people that I'd met when I briefly lived in Ottawa had chosen to do that. And I think broadly we spend more time thinking about what happens outside of Canada than the world spends thinking about us. That was the lesson for me coming to the UK. We are a major energy producer. Energy is a really big part of the conversation here about how we grow our economy, how we get people employed, how we ensure that we have enough money flushing around so we can invest in the types of things that Canadians deem important.
Margareta Dovgal:But when it came to the UK it became really apparent to me that we didn't figure that massively into these global conversations. We're not perceived as unique or especially interesting and, if anything, after I left the UK and some of the stuff we saw in the last couple of years it became clear that we are somewhat marginalizing ourselves in that global conversation. But yeah, I think it was a humbling experience, but also one that fundamentally challenged my views on how we can resolve just these core issues around perceptions of how we address climate change, because that was really a larger focus for my degree.
Stewart Muir:Can you give me one example of a belief that you went there holding pretty firmly? That didn't last?
Margareta Dovgal:Yeah, you know, I had a lot more confidence in how we apply scientific understanding to public policy. I had this sense that, oh well, you know, there are just tangible facts and these are not in debate. And there are facts and we can get into a whole philosophical conversation here, Stewart, But I had the sense that you know there's this problem climate change that is taking place and surely, with you know the collective mental energies of brilliant people around the world, there are some really clear and definitive pathways to addressing this issue. And you know there certainly are. There's tons of work that's gone into.
Margareta Dovgal:We spent a lot of time studying the IPCC's reports and they kind of do two things they look at how is climate change happening, what effect is it having, and then they also look at how you address climate change.
Margareta Dovgal:But the real learning for me, the thing that I think broke my I don't want to say trust, but my faith maybe that things were just really clear and there shouldn't be very much debate were just really clear and there shouldn't be very much debate was that even if some underlying fundamentals are clear how you apply, where you weight different preferences on impacts to the economy, impacts to employment, impacts to affordability around energy transition? That's not clear cut. There is no answer for those kinds of questions in science alone or in economic analysis alone, and different economists will come up with fundamentally different views of an issue because they have different value preferences going into the conversation. So I think on some level that shook my understanding, but it also gave me an aha moment of hey, this is something I can actually do. I think getting into that headspace of wanting to communicate how we take things that are fundamentally uncertain and chart a clear path forward inspired me to really reinvest myself and actually come back to ResourceWorks to continue that work.
Stewart Muir:Value preferences. What are you referring to?
Margareta Dovgal:Let's take something that is relatively uncontroversial here in Canada. We have this idea that the poorest members of our society shouldn't go hungry, and you know there's certainly debate not only across the political spectrum but just in society at large at what kinds of redistributive mechanisms whether it's social assistance or, you know, jobs and training investments or support for subsidized housing what sort of investments of taxpayer dollars are actually worthwhile and necessary. That's a value preference, fundamentally. Some countries look at the issue of inequality, which is scarcity. There's not always going to be enough to allocate to people. We live in a fundamentally competitive world and some countries decide that's not really the problem for governments to look at, that's the problem for charities, that's the problem for families to support each other through difficult times. Other countries, like Scandinavia, or states generally, they say no, it's actually everyone's responsibility to look at that. And those differences, they're cultural, they're based on where you grew up, your background. For context, I grew up below the poverty line, so my parents came to Canada just before I was born and had a pretty difficult upbringing. In a relative sense. I compare my outcomes, my well-being and generally how my childhood looks to people who grew up quite poor in other parts of the world, and it's a difference of night and day. But where you come from and where your cultural values are will inform where you put the emphasis on any question. That's before a political decision maker, it's before a voter, that's before an administrator in a government. And, as it relates to climate change, we spend a lot of time not only thinking about just this question of how do you cut emissions. I mean, if you want to cut emissions, you stop emitting. Not so easy, though, because it's fundamentally entangled with what kind of economy do we want to have? What kind of affordability do we want to have? Do we want to keep growing? Do we want to meet energy needs? And I think this is really at the heart of why we have sometimes very challenging and very conflict-laden issues that crop up in and around energy and climate dialogue in Canada and globally, because some people look at this and they say, well, the solution is to deindustrialize, you know, kill industry. Let's do that. That could be a solution. But others will look at it and say, no, we actually can't afford to do that. Voters won't let us do that, we don't have the mandate to do that. So they're looking for alternatives, and I think that's kind of where we end up.
Margareta Dovgal:I had this real struggle coming to the end of my master's program. I'd worked on this big consulting project looking at consumption behavior. So it was about economics, but it wasn't an economics thesis, it was a group project that we did. That was kind of commissioned by the government of the United Arab Emirates and they are really concerned with these issues. They're a major energy producer and they're trying to understand what do you do with all that wealth? How do you create a society that has the kinds of outcomes that you want? And all countries fundamentally have these similar challenges. Some of them get into sort of a comfortable stasis that no one has any issues with. Other times it leads to the kinds of outcomes that you don't want and in this case people spend a lot of money, don't save very much and get into financial trouble a little bit more often.
Stewart Muir:Yeah, and what about when they run out of oil over there?
Margareta Dovgal:Well, that's a question I think that region is obsessed with right now because they're thinking a lot about it, and it's not even so much the idea of running out of oil which I think know. I think we used to have this like historical conversation. Yeah, yeah, like 1960s, we spent a lot of time and even more recently I remember in the early 2000s this term would crop up and in a matter of speaking with the technology that was available at the time, that was a concern that you know just wouldn't be economical to drill. But then innovation comes along. You have new technologies like same thing happens in mining. It happens in all kinds of industries where there's fundamental questions around is this economically viable to get this product that we really need from wherever it's based, in the land or under the seabed, wherever you're getting it? And we had a huge breakthrough here in Canada was SAGD being pioneered Steam-assisted Steam-assisted gravity drainage? I think yes.
Stewart Muir:Yeah, that's the one where you don't really see it. From the air. It looks like the regular landscape, in contrast to the more notorious oil sands mining, which got to be the poster child of what a lot of environmental activism didn't like about Canada, you know, 10, 15 years ago. But really the future, although that mining is still around, it's going to be around. That's a big chunk of production, but the growth area is really in the Seg D, right? Yes, that's right.
Margareta Dovgal:And natural gas is a major growth area generally for Canadian energy as well. So we have new drilling techniques and industries are always innovating. So we had this speak well conversation for a while and it fell away because markets decided, hey, we can actually take this risk where we're willing to. And the concept around peak oil sometimes gets confused with demand for energy. People will look at this question from 10, 15, 20 years ago about can we get to it in a way that actually makes sense and they conflate it with will we need this product? Do we need energy? Answer is yes, we need massive amounts of energy to power everyday life. World's population is still rapidly growing. Canada's population is growing.
Stewart Muir:I want to just finish hearing more about your compass point when you got started back in Canada. Yeah, so you set to work. You worked on the task force. What's the story of the task force?
Margareta Dovgal:So maybe just to roll back a little bit. You know you invited me to come back and I think at that time what I would be doing wasn't initially clearly defined. You just kind of said there's going to be exciting projects. You've been a researcher for us for like five years. At that point and why don't I make you the director of research and resource works? And I said, sure, you know I do want to spend my time writing reports, and in a sense I did write some reports.
Margareta Dovgal:The Task Force for Real Jobs, real Recovery, was an example of that. We put together a very large report with several dozen inputs and had to negotiate you know the fine intricacies of which word do you use on which potentially controversially laden issue and that was a really great experience for someone fresh out of grad school to be able to do that. But then I was also involved in you know all sorts of projects that I had absolutely no idea I would be getting into. Oh, now you tell me, yeah, well, we've been on this journey together for Hanger Stewart and yeah, you brought me along and it was a really, really fun way to onboard every type of skill set I possibly could have as it relates to this sort of broad question of how do we communicate about the things that the public cares about, decision makers care about, industry cares about, and I think I came out of it realizing that I was glad that I hadn't stayed in the UK. There was a question kind of at the end of my program where I was wondering, hmm, maybe I should look for jobs in consulting and see what's out there.
Margareta Dovgal:But there was something pulling me home to Canada. It wasn't just the beautiful North Shore mountains that I really like living here in Vancouver, but it was just a sense that that is a culture I now understand better. That is a country I now in some weird way understand better, having not been in it for a year, having not interacted with Canadians but actually been almost a voice for Canadians in my class, having tons of conversations with. You know really smart policy minds in the UK who don't even think about Canada in the context of their day-to-day, maybe come up as a footnote or a great vacation destination, but they don't spend a lot of mental energy considering what goes on here, and I felt like I needed to really reinvest myself in better understanding for myself and maybe hopefully be part of the solution on the Canadian front as it relates to energy transition and just economic opportunity for Canadians. As it relates to energy transition and just economic opportunity for Canadians.
Stewart Muir:We've crammed so much into these few years. A theme that's come up, that's been just this increasing driving force in everything we do, is the First Nations Indigenous peoples of Canada. I'm just trying to think back. When did that really come onto the radar for us?
Margareta Dovgal:Here in British Columbia we were aware of there being some historic legislation that was in the process of being passed. And then was passed the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act, which brought this piece of sort of international negotiation undrip into the legal frameworks of British Columbia. It was the first time any jurisdiction in North America had done that frameworks of British Columbia. It was the first time any jurisdiction in North America had done that. It prompted a huge amount of parole, clutching, hand-wringing. Oh no, what is this going to mean, even by people who are, I'd say, relatively informed, well-meaning, have spent years in their fields working with Indigenous communities and peoples who were just suddenly worried. Wait a minute, is this going to fundamentally alter the process by which projects, large capital projects, get built in Canada? And you decided very quickly, three-month runway. You said, hey, team, let's put on a conference, you know, january 4th or 5th in Vancouver.
Stewart Muir:It was right after Christmas. I think it was the 14th, but yeah, it was truly right after Christmas.
Margareta Dovgal:Yeah so we did that and then the pandemic happened, so we just kind of squeezed it in. Finally, a few weeks we didn't know what was coming. The pandemic hit and I got more and more comfortable with my role and all the interesting different directions that could take me. We started to grow very quickly as an organization and just moved around constantly talking to people A lot of it was over Zoom those first couple of years about what was needed and I saw almost like this, like straight shot to the types of conversations that we could now have in a renewed way with people not bound by geographic constraints.
Margareta Dovgal:We were talking to really smart people in Toronto and Ottawa and Atlantic Canada. We were talking to people in Northern territories. We were talking to Americans and lots of people here in BC that we probably didn't see very much because they were just so busy traveling, just as you were, prior to the pandemic. So I think that was a really good growth phase for us. But also I think there was a renewed demand for people to understand what it all meant and I think that's why we decided to have this economic recovery vehicle where we looked at policy suggestions on how we could rebuild the economy, because people were craving certainty. They were craving something that would give them a clear picture on what was coming after.
Stewart Muir:Yeah, and you know a little bit of context on the indigenous peoples here in British Columbia and the northwest corner of North America that was brought into the European system relatively late in terms of you know a lot of other parts of the world that were part of global empires 100 years ago. When Europeans started arriving here in numbers in the mid-19th century, the First Nations population dropped to 5% of what it had been before contact really rapidly. And at the time the Europeans arrived they say look at this fantastic place. It's beautiful climate, you've got abundant fisheries and flora, fauna. What a place to live. And look, it's empty. There's no one here. Well, there was no one here because they all just died of smallpox.
Stewart Muir:And yet for a long time there was that belief and I think it's only now really that full circle. Most everyone is realizing there's such a deeper history and also a lot of injustice in the past that we're beginning to really confront deeply. And to me, the work we started in 2019, it kind of began with our interest in you know, the issues we've been talking about so far, like economic issues, call them that but then you realize, wait a minute, this runs so deep. People have welcomed you into their home in some remote places in BC. You've gotten to know a lot of people, both on stage at the annual events and also in other work. What are your thoughts on where we are now in this post-colonial, if you will process?
Margareta Dovgal:I still struggle to define what decolonization if that's what we're calling it is defined, as People have fundamentally different views on this. But what's clear to me is that these historical injustices didn't just, you know, disappear with the past. Communities have held on to that trauma, to that hurt and to that exclusion. They've been affected by it for decades. And I think there's a process happening right now where, finally, we're not just talking about healing those symbolic and material wrongs and getting justice for people in communities, and I think it's a really big part of why we've seen such massive excitement about the idea of UNDRIP. That's why it became part of the federal policy landscape not long after BC brought it in, and of course that's still unique in a really significant way globally and we have a lot to as a society to reconcile, to resolve. But then there's also the economic inclusion component and I think that's a really, really important piece. Here. It's not the meaning and intent necessarily behind why things are the way that they are and academics like to really get into meaning and intent and symbolic structures and certainly had a fair share of that when I went to UBC for my undergrad but it is about material outcomes and material inequality Communities that have access to opportunities, that have ways to reach those opportunities through skills, education, governance mechanisms, infrastructure like physical infrastructure that gives you internet, gives you good roads that are reliable, gives you access to rail if you want to export products that you're producing, those communities can recover and invest in themselves much more than ones that can't. And that's, I think, where the really really big excitement on this topic has been.
Margareta Dovgal:Broadly across Canada We've had so many news stories and headlines over the years we've been doing this conference, which just had its fifth year, the Indigenous Partnership Success Showcase. It hasn't just been sort of those stories in the broader context of, you know, residential schools and that legacy and the work that is being done to uncover harm that was done to communities and to allow them to heal. But I think there's a sense of moral purpose that we see from corporate Canada that has come through. They feel like they have a role to play in reconciling ongoing wrongs and inequalities by including Indigenous peoples and in addition to that, there's a strong investment case for it too. Companies need certainty. They want to know that they can go ahead and build projects that are large, that require some degree of community buy-in, and there's now been this really great business case for investing in those relationships.
Margareta Dovgal:So we're seeing a confluence of different factors coming together and it's been really exciting, I think, to be in the thick of it. We've seen it not just in natural resources. Now it's all across the economy. Everyone is now talking about it and the moment has come and I often ask myself over the years we've been doing this, what does the end state for this project look like? When do we know that this isn't needed anymore? Will that mean that we're reconciled as a society? Is that a process that has a defined end date? I still don't know whether that's a thing, but I think where we are right now, five years in, it's just fundamentally different than where we were when we started all of this.
Stewart Muir:You know, one of the things we've done a lot of over the years at ResourceWorks is public opinion polling. We have gone to pollsters and we've asked them to look at questions that we think are important, and they'll go away and do their work and we'll share the results. Also, there's a ton of other polling that's not ours that informs us on what we see. What are your thoughts on the role of polling in what we do?
Margareta Dovgal:But the only kind of survey work, I think that truly gives you definitive answers that are well, they can still be interpreted differently but certainly are more clear cut. Are polls around, will people vote a certain way or will people spend money a certain way? And that kind of survey work you can see the proof in the pudding. When you get some really good pollsters, they're sometimes able to predict an election like down to the T, able to predict an election like down to the T. And they do that because they understand how people's responses to polling questions actually translate to actions, actions of the ballot box, actions when they go to the supermarket and pick a specific product. And I think that kind of polling is a little bit more definitive and credible in some ways than broader, more kind of you could say, relative questions. And that's not to say that what we hear from polling isn't useful. I think it's part of informed decision makers' toolbox and it gives you a chance to understand. If you get the framing right and you ask the right question. That actually relates to what people are thinking about. You can understand how they're going to react and what the public sentiment is about any type of decision that is before a government and to that extent, I'm really, really interested in what we've been seeing in the last couple of years on affordability conversations. People are a lot more worried about their ability to afford everyday life and you see that not only being reflected in the polling numbers across the country, but you see that being reflected in the political discourse and the two are sort of interconnected.
Margareta Dovgal:But I always like to consider as well that polling gives you a snapshot of a specific audience. Not everyone who cares about these issues is going to bother picking up the phone when someone calls them. They're not going to necessarily be part of a self-selected cohort of online you know digital polls. So you're not going to necessarily be part of a self-selected cohort of online digital polls. So you're not getting a fully comprehensive picture, but you're getting something that's a useful proxy for understanding. But it won't tell you how much consequential developments, how much a politician getting out there and saying something completely out of left field can actually fundamentally alter public opinion on an issue. And that's, I think, the limitation fundamentally, when we try to look at polling as a definitive guide to.
Margareta Dovgal:Here is how you make a decision, here is what the public wants, because sometimes having the nerve and the gumption to get up there and say no, I think we need to do this will just change the landscape completely.
Margareta Dovgal:Or you have a global event that you can't control and people's views and priorities change rapidly, and the last couple of years have been such an intense time for that kind of massive change in perspective shifting, and we've seen people on energy, on all sides of the conversation, really intensely trying to sway public opinion and also using polling as a way to say oh hey, look, here are proof points, tangible proof points, irrefutable ones that this is what the public wants and, depending on how you ask the question, I think you can get anyone to say anything. So there's limitations to how useful I think they are, but I think they are also deeply insightful, particularly when there's that ability to reflect how something actually plays out in the public conversation, with how you ask the question. When someone gets a call and pollster says so, would you or wouldn't you support a government that did?
Stewart Muir:X or Y? Do you think there's a difference in how polls can be used, on the one hand, to be a leader, to say, look at these issues, I'm learning about these issues. Okay, I know what needs to be done. I'm going to lead on this issue by saying something. Maybe not everyone will agree with it, but it's the thing I need to do to lead, versus taking polls as the thing one should do and say that's a popular statement. So I'm just going to use that statement. I don't need to believe in it, but it'll be a popular statement and it will allow me to become more influential. I mean, there's a very big difference in those two approaches, don't you think?
Margareta Dovgal:I'd say so, yeah, and I don't mean to say that I'm a complete cynic and I don't believe in the credibility or value of polls as an input for informed decision making. But to your point, I do think there's a lot of value in trial balloons and we see these in public relations being used in a variety of ways. Sometimes it'll be kind of a comment at a press conference that someone makes oh and, by the way, blah, blah, blah, and they're testing the water. They want to see how that gets picked up by media, they want to see what the public's reaction is. And you see, that strategy sometimes employed in polls that ask questions that are are very different from the types of mainstream conversations we're having.
Margareta Dovgal:But I think, generally speaking, we're not in an entirely closed box environment here in Canada. We take a lot from conversations happening in the United States. Our media landscape here has changed very rapidly, very quickly, and it's kind of disintegrating, to be perfectly honest. It's getting harder and harder to have dedicated community media to really understand issues happening on the ground and I think as a result, we're borrowing more and more from debates that are happening south of the Canada-US border. We're seeing a lot more, I think, sort of distilling down of points, because we just don't have the ability to really get granular and understand the unique Canadian context always.
Margareta Dovgal:And that's where I think, being bold and brave and being willing to get out of that sort of mainstream box where there's just sort of a specific range of issues that actually say, hey, no, maybe we should be thinking about this rather than how we're currently looking at it. That can go a very long way and I think that's really the heart of the work we've been doing here at ResourceWorks trying to see, well, what's already current and timely and engaging what will resonate with people. But what are ways of looking at energy, at the role of Canada's natural resource industries, at climate commitments that can provoke meaningful conversations about issues that are much more complex than most people have the ability and the time and the energy to really think about?
Stewart Muir:pun intended. Yeah, well, that's the power struggle and that's kind of why we're here. I was thinking about all of the polls. Right now there's an election campaign in the United States, there's a federal campaign coming up in Canada next year probably and there's definitely an election campaign happening here in British Columbia. Right now we're swimming in polls. There's a poll though that's got nothing to do with any of those polls that I'm thinking about that we did at ResourceWorks. We commissioned a pollster, a really good pollster. I'll give them a shout out because they're so good. Ipsos, I always enjoy working with them. We wanted to find out how soon people thought energy transition would occur. So Polster said well, have you thought of asking them how long, in decades, they think the oil and gas industry, which provides the fossil fuels that people use, is going to be around? And do you remember the answer?
Margareta Dovgal:It was really mixed, but I felt like a plurality of people felt that the runway for Canadian energy was far longer than I think we were hearing from decision makers and the types of points we were hearing about. You know, oh, this is coming to an end, it has to come to an end, and we see a real conflation of those two, so that didn't fully surprise me.
Stewart Muir:That was there, but there was another thread too. What was that? It was that there were a lot of people like half of people thought that there would be this long existence of the oil and gas in their lives, but then the other side was that about half of people thought that it would disappear in 20 years from now, or less, even five years. So it's kind of challenging to think that half the population maybe believes that something that is 80% of the energy in our lives right now, or 75% or three quarters or more, is going to disappear and be replaced with something, or not be replaced with something. I don't know. I don't know what the expectation is in every case.
Margareta Dovgal:Yeah, well, you know there's been this expression in many fields for many years. You know it's the end of truth. You know what does that mean? What does it mean that people are seeing things and others can say, oh no, that's definitely a lie or that's definitely not factual.
Margareta Dovgal:I think for many, many decades the standard in media was the result of mainstream media sources being the only real sources of information people had. It's how we develop a large information-dense society where you had newsprint, you had radio, you had television and most of the information diet people had on what was going on in the world, what the day-to-day issues were, came from pretty small sort of range of possible voices and there was a real emphasis on, you know, things like fact-checking, things like. You know, here's the narrative. But you know we're in the digital age now We've seen a really big segmentation of audiences, so people can come at issues like how important is energy transition from fundamentally different perspectives based on where they're from and what they studied and what kind of work they do and their culture and so many things like that. And you see that reflected in the differences in what kinds of stories are being told by media outlets and on social media about things like energy transition. So I see this pretty broad spread in responses and what you point to is a troubling lack of energy literacy in some cases, where people have a very inaccurate view of how quickly this transition can actually happen. You see that being reflected as a result of this segmentation and I think we are in the post-truth era in a sense, because there is so much misinformation being spread about what is actually out there.
Margareta Dovgal:Being able to have good economic realism and strong understanding of here is how quickly we can electrify our economy. Here's how quickly we can transition the energy sources we use to power our lives. There's tons of options and lots of uncertainty because they depend on things like investment climate. They depend on public taxpayer supports and investments in renewables and other technologies. They depend on the results of democratic elections and some countries we're seeing this a little bit in Europe they're kind of starting to wonder oh no, have we moved too quickly? So there's just so much uncertainty baked into things that are kind of more tangible and practical and that information isn't always finding its way back to even people who are relatively informed voters and we have a lot of information for voters here in Canada, but I think that's where you get that lack of understanding about what's practical and realistic, because people are getting sources of information from so many different places and it's getting harder and harder to have a singular, cohesive, authoritative narrative on these issues.
Stewart Muir:Don't you feel that this is rooted in the desire to accelerate clean energy transition, which is probably a good thing?
Margareta Dovgal:Yeah Well, there's a lot of fear and maybe it's a sense of optimism that there are practical solutions for climate change, because we are seeing more and more impacts of climate change in all aspects of daily life.
Margareta Dovgal:We're seeing it in you know where temperature swings, temperatures that are hotter or colder than they should be.
Margareta Dovgal:We're seeing it in glaciers retreating much faster than they have historically, and you know, you drive through the Canadian Rockies and you know, you see tops of mountains that haven't been seen in you know hundreds and thousands of years, just as you're sort of making your way on a little road trip, and we see it in wildfires, we see it in floods and extreme weather events.
Margareta Dovgal:So the reality of climate change understandably has people really concerned and the types of solutions that are being offered some are very, very reasonable. I think from my perspective, they acknowledge the inherent importance of acting to address climate change and this alarm bell has been sounded for decades. But I think you also, as a result of this being fundamentally an emotional and existential type of question, threat that people are perceiving, you have information that isn't credible, that doesn't actually understand how things work, how you get to solutions in reducing reliance on fuels over time that our society and civilization literally depend on, and they're putting information out there that I think fundamentally misinforms people, gives them unrealistic expectations, and then that translates to political will for public policy decisions that actually hurt our ability to transition in a stable, secure and pragmatic way.
Stewart Muir:You know, I feel like this is fundamental to what we're trying to do with power struggle, and today I'd like to try to get to the bottom of this. One thing I'd like to keep going on this question of what people think about where we're headed, versus maybe what they wish was the direction where we're headed. Just this week, I saw a clip from the House of Commons. It was the Energy Minister of Canada stood up in the House and said something. I'm going to play that clip and I want to see what your reaction is. You haven't heard this before. This is Jonathan Wilkinson, Energy Minister of Canada, this week in the House of Commons. Oil and gas will peak this decade. In fact, oil is probably peaking this year. Oil and gas will peak this decade. In fact, oil and gas is probably peaking this year. Is that what he said? I think what he means when he says peaking is it's going to go down in use after this year. So what do you make of this statement?
Margareta Dovgal:Well, you've used the word aspirational earlier and I think that's very accurate here. I think to some extent he's in a tough bind where so many of the commitments that their government has made hinge on this being a reality. That Canada isn't pulling the plug prematurely on energy and gas, no, no, this is a global thing that's happening and I disagree with that view. I don't think it's factual, I don't think it's accurate to what lots of credible global sources are saying about where our energy needs are going and how they're going to be met. There's tons of variations, we see. We see International Energy Agency with one perspective. We see OPEC, which is lots of global energy producers, saying one thing to act on climate change and the speed and efficacy with which we can actually act on it.
Margareta Dovgal:And if this was a relatively easy thing to accomplish, all this podcast wouldn't exist. First of all, we wouldn't be having this really intense thing, and I think what's at the heart of that is just how fundamentally enmeshed energy is with every aspect of our civilization. The reason we have this incredibly prosperous global civilization is because of oil and gas. We opened up huge reserves of energy over 100 years ago that have allowed for every aspect of human life to become easier, more comfortable and more accessible. We're interconnected. We can fly and move goods and people and move ships and cargo containers and all sorts of things very, very quickly.
Margareta Dovgal:My parents came here just before I was born, from Eastern Europe.
Margareta Dovgal:I was born here and I've traveled around a lot. I have a really comfortable existence relative to every single human being that came before me in my lineage, most of whom were subsistence farmers who were really struggling with just fundamental questions on how do I have enough food to eat, how do I keep my home in brutal winters, and these are questions that we feel like we just don't have to worry about as much anymore. Fossil fuels have enabled that. They have enabled that change. So when we're talking about how quickly we can transition, it's not a symbolic or just hypothetical question making a change in the fundamental economic principles and realities of modern life, and I see aspiration in what Minister Wilkinson is saying. I don't agree with his framing on it and I do fundamentally think that government right now has a policy position where their view is that to act on climate change, which is a real and pressing crisis that we need to as a civilization address, we need to kneecap immediately, because that's going to be the solution that transitions the world over.
Stewart Muir:That's really insightful, margareta, and I'm thinking back to that poll, the episode when we talked about look, if half the population believes that the era of oil and gas is just about over a few years away and it seems the energy minister of Wilkinson believes that too Even this year it's going to slope down. I want to hold that view accountable because I did a little research after I looked at the different views. I don't want to get into numbers on this show. I think it should be our theme that we don't throw percentages around and figures too much, but just let's look at one basic fact that all around the world people every single day use about 102 million barrels of oil. Just one day's use, that's a lot of oil. Before COVID it was about 100 million, so it's risen. During COVID it went crazy down. I'm kind of concerned. Does that make?
Margareta Dovgal:me a bad person. I don't think that makes you a bad person at all. I think it's an important question to ask. That, delta, that we're seeing between millions of barrels a day in global consumption. That's based on something very real in global consumption. That's based on something very real. That's based on uncertainty in how quickly alternatives for energy needs being met will actually come to market. And we're seeing a huge growth right now in electrification across all industries, all global economies.
Margareta Dovgal:There's a really big sense that there's an opportunity for developing economies in particular to kind of jump ahead. You know their populations are growing and this is the trend we see in every single economy as it develops. It needs way more energy to meet its needs, to industrialize, to create productive industries and jobs for people that will allow for them to have a comfortable middle class lifestyle that globally, more or less everyone is aspiring to. So you see a huge surge in need for energy and also this possibility that some of them will be able to jump ahead and go straight to entirely non-emitting sources of energy to power that growth in energy needs. But the reality as well is infrastructure takes a very long time to build. You can build it in some places pretty quickly.
Margareta Dovgal:Canada, unfortunately, we're actually really bad at doing things quickly of any kind, whether it's housing or making renovations on bridges and roads.
Margareta Dovgal:We struggle so much to do things in a timely manner, even though we're relatively wealthy. We have a lot of regulatory uncertainty, a lot of red tape, and the issues that we're having on adding enough non-emitting supply to even British Columbia's electricity grid, for example, is emblematic of the broader global challenges we have. So you have estimates that are taking more seriously global commitments on emissions reduction. They're saying, well, if these countries do what they are pledging to do at global forums, then yeah, we will see a decline in demand for energy. Others take a more cynical view that some of these commitments aren't fully substantiated by actual money available, human capital available, land, available, investment available to build out the alternatives to a fossil fuel-based global economy. And even though we've seen this huge surge in new types of energy being brought online, new transmission, there's still so much of the world's energy diet that is fossil fuels. It's well over 85%, and that number isn't going to shrink substantively very quickly.
Stewart Muir:I feel bad roasting people who are aspirational and want good things to happen in the world, but I also want things to be real. Are there things that are aspirational and real, that you see in how energy can evolve?
Margareta Dovgal:I really struggle with this question. Just generally, I tend to be a little bit more of a cynic and I'm seeing the way we are approaching energy transition as one that is fundamentally uneven. It's like a drunk guy walking down the street, just sort of veering in one direction, another direction. I think Canada is moving very, very quickly and people don't realize that. They look at the fact that we are a major energy producer. We know what's causing climate change. It's not a mystery. It's the fact that our civilization literally depends on energy sources that are emitting. They're putting things into the atmosphere that are causing the climate to change in ways that we can't even fully predict, but we're starting to see those changes and they're scaring us. So that is relatively clear cut, but the devilishly challenging part of all of this is how you smooth out the transition from something that is so fundamental to creating all the outcomes about what's in your energy mix.
Margareta Dovgal:In an academic or hypothetical sense, we're talking about whether people continue to have a quality of life that enables us to have a peaceful, prosperous, relatively harmonious society. Don't get me wrong. We have problems like we, like any society, any democracy, even very well economically developed ones. We have our warts. We have problems that we need to resolve. We have conflicts and tensions that crop up, but they're not the types of conflicts and tensions that typically lead to riots or people being massively unemployed and starving. Those aren't the problems today, because we have so much abundance and that abundance is a lot more precarious than I think people realize. And it's not just you know the forces of evil or you know conquering nations that are a threat, because a lot of people sort of see things as see threats as external, like oh you know Russia is making moves, what's China going to do? And they don't feel sometimes that bad decisions internally over time can actually lead to massive hits to well-being and security. And I think this question security, energy security in particular gets watered down purely an accounting or economic modeling exercise like, oh, will we have enough energy? Because we don't have that experience. In Canada, in British Columbia, for the most part, with exception of some remote communities not having enough energy when we need it and we want it, we're able to enjoy every aspect of everyday life.
Margareta Dovgal:Europeans actually experienced something very consequential last couple of years. They saw not only the impacts of conflict that had been simmering for a long time between Russia and Ukraine start to really affect energy affordability. They actually saw the consequences of really bad decisions that had been made about how to transition where energy sources should be, and my concern is that, in what is fundamentally an unstable global transition, where countries are making commitments that they know they can keep, when we talk to experts they say the math just isn't mathing and you're hurtling down a path where, in some ways, you're going to have to de-industrialize aspects of your economy if you're committed to these commitments, or you're going to blow past them and concern about climate change is going to continue to build. This issue isn't going away and I worry a lot and this is why I'm so cynical fundamentally about this broader conversation that we're going to make a series of decisions that impact people's bottom line hard. We're going to continue to make those decisions globally and we're going to end up being less equipped to deal with the actual consequences of climate change, consequences of growing global instability, and I think we're going to see a lot of climate refugees in the next couple of decades.
Margareta Dovgal:I think we're going to see a huge amount of infrastructure damage and risk as a result of climate change. So these are the types of things that you cannot afford to handle, to absorb without descending into chaos and uncertainty and conflict if you are poor. Fundamental question here. I am optimistic, though, about our ability, through maybe micro shocks like COVID, micro shocks that we see an ocean away when there's a conflict on the other side of the planet to wake us up and say, hey, these things should not be taken for granted. We need to be cognizant of the impacts our decisions can make on our long-term well-being and security and make decisions in a way that allows us to even out this uncertainty around climate and energy transition.
Stewart Muir:Yeah, and right now I'm seeing in flashing lights as you say that two words energy trilemma, which is one of the things that runs through this podcast, power Struggle, because we see as an explainer for it.
Margareta Dovgal:Because we see, as an explainer for it yeah, it's just this inherent challenge you have between affordability, accessibility and sustainability. If it was easy, we wouldn't have a trilemma and no one would have to worry about this. You know, there's some bad decisions in society that we make that probably really are just a matter of hey, maybe we shouldn't do that anymore. And the knock-on effects of like you know what was it? We were putting a hole in the ozone layer with hairspray. You know, back in the 80s and 90s and people had a uh-oh, not the musical, but the stuff in the cans.
Margareta Dovgal:The propellant and airspray, and there was materials used for refrigerators and things like that that we had an easy solution for those. We just went to slightly different products. Sure, those industries probably had some complaints, but they weren't the foundation of modern life. That was a really consequential issue that was resolved relatively quickly because it was relatively easy, all things considered, to resolve the problem with energy and this is why we have this trilemma is every movement in any direction immediately implicates all three of these components. We need to assess it through these lenses Anytime you think about the composition of your energy system, about policies that drive demand for different types of energy products. So when the British Columbia government says, hey, we want all new cars, just in a couple of years they're sold to be electric vehicles. That massively changes the demand for electricity and we're seeing the provincial government here really grapple with how quickly they're going to bring new electricity generation online. When you make a decision to eliminate a carbon tax, which I think is possible to see in the next couple of years-.
Stewart Muir:And now most of the parties want to do that. Yeah, and that's going to.
Margareta Dovgal:parties want to do that, yeah, and that's going to have a massive impact on sustainability In BC, not the majority of parties federally at the moment. Yeah, that's true.
Stewart Muir:Two of the three in BC.
Margareta Dovgal:And the federal NDP has torn up their agreement with them.
Stewart Muir:So two of the four federal parties want to get rid of all this until very recently.
Margareta Dovgal:Yeah, because people have been affected by the affordability implications. So again, it's that energy trilemma Decisions that we make will have trade-offs and that's actually the thing that. That word trade-offs is something I was, I guess, aware of, but when I did my master's it came up in every single lecture, it came up in every reading that I did, and there are people who are very rightfully obsessed with it, because if you put forward solutions to complex, really wicked problems, as policymakers call them, without thinking about the trade-offs or acknowledging that there's going to be some people who aren't happy, you're going to constantly find yourself flooding back and forth, back and forth, back and forth on different courses of action. And the real challenge for policymakers globally and policymakers in Canada is to get that balance where these are the policies that are actually going to have an effect.
Margareta Dovgal:I think carbon pricing is, by the way it works. We know it works and we can do it in a way that doesn't affect the economy and affordability to an unacceptable extent. So it's getting the right policies that work on a sustainability front, that work on an economy front and don't undermine the basic reliability of the energy system. But then also the political sustainability piece really needs to come through, because you need to be obsessed with this question of is this going to be so unpopular that, rather than this policy just being rolled back a little bit, the response is to swing it completely the other way? And I think that's a real risk that we're seeing globally right now, because many countries have taken a very ambitious path to acting on climate change and in economies, in countries where people's standards of living are already very high, there are going to be consequences for people's bottom line and they're going to be angry as hell about it, and that's a real threat and risk to our ability to have that even and stable transition in energy.
Stewart Muir:Let me see if you agree with this distillation of what you just said. The Achilles heel of aspiration is the risk of miscalling the trade-offs that you're making.
Margareta Dovgal:Yeah, that's true. And at the same time, there's a risk that you don't move quickly enough that you say, ok, just business as usual, and the problem just keeps getting worse and worse and worse. And on the opposite end of it, you have governments who are coming in, responding to worsening more frightful, more terrifying news on climate change, and their solution is also really, really nonsensical, potentially damaging, and sets us back in a variety of critical ways. I don't want to get to a point where complete deindustrialization by accident or by design is actually on the table. I'm optimistic about technological solutions, though.
Margareta Dovgal:I think we are finding ways to innovate ourselves out of this problem right now, and there's a huge amount of work that's going in on carbon capture, and I kind of have two scenarios in my mind. I have one where we're able to make breakthroughs in carbon capture all different types of systems and technologies employed and we won't just be able to mitigate our emissions, so reduce the emissions that are going out into the atmosphere. I do that in a variety of ways, but carbon capture is one of them but we can actually start to counteract some of the emissions that we've put up there in the first place that are creating this problem that we have. That's scenario one. If we can accomplish that, I think this will hopefully not be as much of an issue in the next 30, 40 years.
Stewart Muir:Surely the ills or negatives of fossil fuels can be managed by? You know carbon capture technology people you know. Do you believe there's potential for big breakthroughs in processes like that? That will might be completely unexpected not that we should bank on them if they're unknown, but I mean, how do we deal with that?
Margareta Dovgal:I don't think it's a matter of breakthroughs necessarily. Breakthroughs are wonderful. You know, you can't predict what impact something is going to have until someone is able to innovate it. Get that information out there. Sometimes scientists discover things that they didn't even realize are consequential, and then it's not until years later that someone looks back at their work and says, hey, I see an application here. Other times it's the result of targeted research and focus. We suspect there's a solution here, or we know there's a solution here and we need to optimize it. So it's the result of targeted research and focus. We suspect there's a solution here, or we know there's a solution here and we need to optimize it so it's actually viable. And that's actually the key.
Margareta Dovgal:It is the commercial viability of solutions that is the biggest challenge, I think, in innovation right now. We have tons of great technologies that can actually suck carbon out of the atmosphere. If you have fans big enough and the energy to power them and places to store that carbon in out of the atmosphere. If you have fans big enough and the energy to power them in places to store that carbon, in theory we can suck up all the carbon that's in the atmosphere. Hypothetically. The cost of doing that, though with current technologies, current economies of scale which can get better as these industries commercialize and we gain a lot of expertise in them doing that becomes more possible, but it's still so expensive that it's just not viable at present.
Margareta Dovgal:I'm really actually interested in biological systems-based solutions, so there was a really cool experiment. It's a company called Lucent Biosciences that's based here in Vancouver, and they cited an experiment that was done, I think, in 2014, 2015, off the coast of Haida Bwai. We had a First Nation, the Haida Nation work, with some scientists who are part of Lucerne Biosciences, to fertilize the water using iron and other micronutrients, and the idea there was you do that algae blooms, you get lots of bioavailable nutrients that lead to this algae bloom, fish eat that. Your fish runs, stabilize they call this the salmon restoration project, if I'm not mistaken and in the process, you're actually sequestering, whack loads of carbon that's in the atmosphere, because when plants grow, when algae grows, anything that's green, it needs carbon dioxide to grow, so it was actually pulling a good amount of carbon out of the atmosphere and then sinks to the bottom.
Stewart Muir:So the plankton was blooming, then dying, and then sinking to the bottom of the ocean, that's right, carrying the carbon.
Margareta Dovgal:Exactly, yeah, and that is a technology that is now getting, after many years and some false starts, where parcels of the oceanography community had this conversation, people in climate had this conversation almost a decade ago now, and on the balance, there was risk intolerance like, oh, that's geoengineering, we shouldn't touch that, we're geoengineering every day. That's the nature of how our global economy runs, so we need to think ambitiously about solutions and finally, after like a decade I think, they patented the technology, the methodology for measuring sequestration potential.
Stewart Muir:You know that's fascinating, and part of me wants to launch into a one hour extension a future episode where we come back to this and like 10 other things we've talked about, and I think we would have an audience for it. I think if anyone's listened this far, they probably listened for you know, so hold that thought for next time. Margarita, you've worked across continents, you've delivered recommendations to the United Arab Emirates Prime Minister's office, you've led initiatives here in Canada and public policy. I just want to ask you, though, what's the most bizarre or unexpected lesson that you've learned about energy in your time?
Margareta Dovgal:I think it's that most people and most decision makers even the very smart, very effective, very passionate decision makers have absolutely no conception of economics. And that's just a general feeling I have and I don't think they need to. I wish they did. But the way our democracy works, it's not about the numbers, it's really about persuasion, it's about emotional resonance, it's about the things that capture the spirit of the moment. And sometimes you get phenomenal leaders who can see all of these things. They know how to drive the bus forward on really critical long-term issues. They have a really clearly articulated set of values and they're prepared to carry through on it. But then they can tie that to sort of the short-term things that come up and keep it relevant and engaging and build that public support and move forward. And I think you can do all of those things.
Margareta Dovgal:But my underlying concern continues to be about economic literacy.
Margareta Dovgal:I think that people are concerned when it becomes a relevant issue to their bottom line and someone brings it to their attention that, hey, this policy will have an impact on you.
Margareta Dovgal:And that's often where we see that proof point that by and large more systemic, structural things they don't create a sense of urgency. And I think for me, the big lesson here is those who communicate about energy, about public policy, about innovation, about economies need to get better at understanding how to build that political will, because there can be things that are on fire I mean literally sometimes forests on fire and that's a policy issue in a sense. But conveying that in a way that drives action, allows you to get through the inherent inefficiencies in delivering something on a massive scale, is the most important thing, and I want to see decision makers be held accountable by the public, be held accountable by journalists and by commentators, when they fail to demonstrate that core economic literacy that will ensure that their decisions aren't going to lead to massive knock-on consequences that make everyone poorer, less happy and make just Canada less secure into the future.
Stewart Muir:Lots to think about there. Marguerite Adovgal, thanks for coming on Power Struggle.
Margareta Dovgal:Thanks, Derek.
