Episode 126: Energy sector challenges and opportunities in Alberta, with ATCO’s Jason Sharpe

[MUSIC] The advantage I'd say our market has is there is a high entrepreneurial spirit within this market and a big push to get it figured out and move things forward. You just have to make sure that perfection is not the enemy of good. [MUSIC] Welcome to the flux capacitor, a podcast about the future of electricity. I'm Francis Bradley of electricity Canada. This is number one two six episode, 126 of the flux capacitor. I've been chatting with the industry's business leaders, thought leaders, new market players and stakeholders, the folks that have been pondering the future of how we create, move, trade, and use energy, and what the future changes will mean for electricity companies, regulators, society, and customers. I hope these conversations are given you, the listener, a sense of the conversations that are taking place in the sector. My guest on the podcast today is Jason Sharp. I'm the chief operating officer for ACCO Energy Systems and work for ACCO. Jason joined me for a chat about the company's operations, which includes electric and gas transmission and distribution in Alberta. ACCO manages 11,000 kilometers of electric transmission lines, 58,000 kilometers of distribution lines, and 9,100 kilometers of high pressure pipelines. Jason highlights the challenges posed by wildfires and the need for operational resilience. We also talk about the importance of attracting talent to the energy sector and the potential impact of data centers on energy demand and costs. We close the conversation with his book Recommendation. Here is my conversation with Jason Sharp recorded on Zoom in late October 2025. Jason, welcome to the podcast. Time for us to chat a little bit about ACCO and how it fits in the picture. That's great. I'm looking forward to it. All right. So why don't we start for the listener who may not be familiar with ACCO and Canadian utilities and ACCO energy and ACCO energy systems? You introduce yourself as COO ACCO Energy Systems. So how about for the listener just an explanation of what ACCO energy systems is and then maybe how it fits in that broader ACCO family? Thanks, Francis. Even if you knew who ACCO is, I might fully understand the whole company because we do a lot of things. So ACCO Energy Systems essentially are utility operations in North America. So I head up our electric transmission distribution as well as our gas transmission and distribution businesses in Alberta. Actually we're in the North as well. So that'd be my portfolio. It is our utility portfolio. Take a step back. Canadian utilities limited is essentially our energy arm of the ACCO family. We are held by ACCO and then if you go up to the ACCO company that would include businesses like ACCO structures. You would have seen the workforce housing that they do. ACCO Frontec who does a lot of work in camp services, military services and also ACCO energy which is a retail energy provider here in Alberta and does home services and you know a whole bunch of other retail functions that kind of help take care of your home. So it's at, you know, and I guess there's also businesses in Australia, Mexico, Europe. So it is a fairly complex business to describe but hopefully I've captured it in that minute and a half. Yeah, yeah. And internationally Puerto Rico was that right? We also operate the Puerto Rico grid in partnership with Ponta. So that company is Luma. That's in our non-regulated sector so I don't have responsibility for that but yes that has been quite an undertaking for us as well. Yeah, I'll bet. All right. So let's come back to Canada and North America and electricity and natural gas. And so your side of the business is the regulated piece of the business, the transmission distribution regulated business at that, right? That's right. So if I look to kind of what we are within our energy systems, we have our aqua electric, aqua gas and pipelines. So we would be one of the few investor-owned combo utilities when you look at that. We have about 11,000 kilometers of transmission, electric transmission lines, 58,000 kilometers of distribution, electric distribution lines, 9,100 kilometers of high pressure pipelines and 55,000 kilometers of distribution pipelines. What I would, what I think is unique for us, I mean if you look at the Alberta market, even when you describe a utility in North America, you kind of have to know which state or which province you're in to know what you're describing. So in many of the states, they might be a vertically integrated utility in Alberta. It's a non-regulated market. So the utility portion of that is the wires and pipes. The generation is non-regulated. The retail function is non-regulated. And we're kind of that connection that connects the whole market together. Right. Right. So in that context, well actually maybe before I get to talk about what you're seeing is the big challenges. Just scope and scale, electric customers in the end that you're distributing electricity to and natural gas. So what are those two look like? Yeah. So I'd say top line, there probably isn't a business or a resident in Alberta that doesn't touch out those systems. One or the other. We from an electricity standpoint, we have far more industrial load than we do. Residential load. We serve mostly the north. So we have 230,000 customers in 242 communities. So if you take that 58,000 kilometers of line and divide it just by those customers, you can see just how much wire it takes to serve them. Now for our business, we also serve a lot of the oil production within Alberta. And industrial loads. So we have a different energy mix, I would say, the most distribution utilities. We also have some of the more challenging terrain, particularly I'm sure. I don't think you can talk about electricity without talking about wildfires nowadays. So when you look at our territory, we're north of 80% of the forested area in Alberta is around our service territory. Yeah, which obviously brings some challenges with it. But challenges that we, I think, are up to. Yeah, yeah. So maybe let's chat a little bit about those challenges. I mean, obviously wildfires is one of them and be interested to kind of get your take on that. But I imagine there's, you've got a set of strategic and operational challenges that you're facing today as you look to move to the future. Clearly wildfires is one of the probably bigger operational ones on a day-to-day basis. But maybe let's talk a little bit about wildfires. And then I'd like to kind of get your sense on sort of the big picture, some of the strategic issues that you're seeing as you look to the future as well. Wildfires, we're going through a pretty challenging time. What has this year been like for you? Because I've been hearing from other members that three of the worst years for wildfires were in the last four years. So was this another bad year for Alberta? Yeah, so I'd say what was interesting for this year. If I took this year and maybe pushed it back five years ago, I would say this was a really bad year. But unfortunately, I think just what we've seen happen over the last decade, two decades with drought-like conditions and quite honestly, a build up of fuel. The last couple of years, we've seen record years when it came to wildfires. Yeah, when you say build up a fuel for the listener, that means there's just a lot more dry wood. That's exactly right. Yeah. You have drought-like conditions, you have more fuel for those fires. And as I said, our infrastructure is right in the heart of that. As I look at this year, and I moved into this role closer to the beginning of the year, And as we started coming into wildfire season, I think what took me back, where I was before, I've always been part of the Akko family. And I was pretty blown away by just how many small fires there were in and around our infrastructure. What I would be pretty proud of for our industry is our response to that. We at Akko here have started a emergency response team kind of goes into operations at the start of the wildfire season and stays in operations right through wildfire season. So if you're, as an example, if you're the person running or slave-like office, you won't necessarily be in charge of that wildfire response. You'll be continuing to maintain the system, keep the customers on and do all that. And we'll have a separate team that rotates throughout the wildfire season just to respond to wildfires. And we've got that as a combination team between our electric transmission distribution teams and they even will agree in the gas system as well at times. So what that allows us to do is we're responding better but we're not we're not burning our people out. What I would maybe the listener wants to take away from that is we've operationalized the response to wildfire, which tells you how many wildfires we've had. It's been record-setting over the last five years when you look at the decades before just how much more we're responding to. Now, we've had to operationalize it. In any utility, we take safety and reliability quite seriously and I think utilities are very good at that. But when you start to see trends year over year, you start to operationalize those responses and that's a response might be good, but the fact that we're having a response really does tell you where the climate has gone on that front. - Yeah, Jason, one of the things I ask folks that come on the podcast is about their journey. So I'd be interested to kind of get a sense of what your journey has been. And I always make the joke, you know, when you were a kid on the playground, is this what you always dreamed of? Or in your case, was it to be a freestyle competitive skier? (laughing) What was your journey? - So maybe I got two stories on that. The journey, so you've obviously read my bio. So I did ski on the Canadian national ski team for mollibles on the development team. So one never made it to World Cup, but one level off of World Cup. So I'll maybe say this piece to anybody who's got teenagers that are still finding their path. At 22 years old, I think I had a heart to heart with my dad at the time, where he said it's time to move on from skiing and I told him the last thing I wanted to do, excuse me, the last thing I wanted to do was to wear a suit to work every day. I had a plan to load chair lifts, live in a basement suite and ski powder. That's not exactly how it turned out and I probably couldn't afford vacations with my five kids if I had a gone that route. (laughing) So if you've got kids that are still finding their way, I call myself a brisket. I might have taken a little bit more time up front to season and it's a slow cook, but it turns out well in the end. How did I find myself here? Perhaps it's at 24, I kind of found for myself. This skiing wasn't going anywhere. I had a summer job in the energy industry and being in Alberta, it was on the gas side of the industry. - Yeah. - And I guess what took me at that time was the opportunities that were out there in that industry. I ended up starting with Atco when I finished, I went back to school, did an engineering degree, started with Atco and as I just described kind of the Atco family, you can have multiple careers all within the same company here which was great for me. And even as I looked at energy, you could have multiple careers within the energy industry as we move forward. So did an engineering degree, a few years later, I did an MBA, it was always kind of more drawn to the commercial side of things. - Yeah. - And worked my way up doing major projects, a little bit of commercial, got some operational experience. And I ran our pipeline group in, I think it was 2015. We had combined our gas and pipeline group in 2018 and then most recently gained responsibility for our electricity group. And I mean, every one of those has been amazing being able to learn from the people around you. And as I said, you know, you kind of multiple different careers as you go along. So I've been very lucky. I'd also say if anybody's listening to this and figuring out their career, I've also said yes. So I was asked a few times to move to positions that maybe didn't think was gonna be an opportunity for me. I trusted in the company and trusted in those leaders that were asking me and always said yes. And you know, it was lucky enough to end up in the role I mean, now which is, you know, a privilege to have. - Okay, cool. - I know that's a much longer story probably, but. And for anybody that's wondering, I can still ski, but my kids have passed me. - Oh yeah, okay. What advice are you gonna give your kids when they're 22? - Oh, I've got a, I've got a 20, I've got a 22 year old. - Okay. - She's following in her mother's footsteps. So my wife has a PhD in nursing and my daughter is looking at med school and has her path figured out. I also have a 20 year old that's following in my footsteps, worked at a ski hill for a couple of years and is now figuring out finance, engineering. So just being supportive and be there to help them along but not necessarily push a little, but not set their path for them. So yeah. All right, so let's come back to electricity and natural gas because you've got both as businesses. But recently have taken over the electricity side of things. Is it any different? The regulated electricity business from the regulated gas business? - So I'd say how they make money and the fundamentals of the businesses are the same. - Right. - You know, their utilities, they have a return on equity and investment framework, the regulatory frameworks are very similar. So all of that is very similar. Oh, if not the exact same. What's different is how we maybe plan the infrastructure and maybe this is unique to Alberta, but we plan out the gas system, as customers come in. Well, one of the big customers on the gas system is electric generation. And then we plan out that load to the electric generation and then we see that load materializing and we start planning out the electric transmission and distribution system. There isn't a lot of people that have that view to the entire sector. So what I notice is difference is we, I think we all know our piece of that pie very well. There's not a ton of people that understand the whole energy ecosystem. And that goes right from, again, being in Alberta, there's a lot of gas production here. That goes right from gas producers all the way to the person turning on their light switch. I was at an electric conference and they were talking about the fact that the, in Western Canada, we sit on this mass of reserve of natural gas. And because of that, we wouldn't see constraints to the electric system when it's cold or peaking. And our systems do peak at the same time. What's different here than maybe Ontario, Ontario has a pretty good mix from nuclear, about a third, third say renewable, hydro and a third gas. In Alberta, we have a large penetration of renewables, but when it's minus 30 and below, 90, 9% is coming from natural gas. Right. Where I talk about that whole energy picture, while we sit on the resource at minus 30, the windmills can't turn, but also the natural gas production drops, while it's freeze off. So you have less supply of that resource as well. So when you start looking at the whole picture, you have to build in some redundancies around, around those peak energy use cases. And it's, it's the whole value chain. Maybe that's batteries, maybe that's gas storage, right? They're both the same of storing energy for that peak time that you only need it. Well, last year was five days, right a couple years ago, was 14. So you never know how long you need it, which means you have to plan for that worst case scenario. Yeah, no I remember not not this past winter, but the winter before those 14 days those were 14 very challenging days. Yeah, and For everyone Whether it's And we had We had a grid that was at its maximum else with pipeline system at its maximum and You know as in in atco because we have a little bit of visibility of both we had We probably have three four hundred people out 24/7 just keeping the energy flowing I think people always realize that when they think of what they're paying for In their utility bills Challenges do you see any any challenges with respect to making sure that you've you've got The redundancy and the infrastructure that you're going to need sort of projecting to the future or like what do you see as As the potential bottlenecks to being able to to get To continue to build that that infrastructure that you will require population is growing The the economic activity is growing How are you going to keep up? And what's kind of In the way of ensuring that you're going to be able to keep up I think At the risk of turning to all challenges But there always is some challenges in front of us One of the things you know that I've noticed and I would say it's it's across our sector There's a lot of talk about affordability right now. And affordability is is key. I mean People in the in this country and in the country south of us. I mean it's it's It's a bigger and bigger short share of your wallet for your energy But what I've noticed is that that narrative around utilities specifically when it comes to affordability is changing So And not in a positive way you're starting to see and I see it more It depends on your jurisdiction and where you operate We definitely see it In our operating area and again, I kind of describe what our Our operating area was like well Those you know 230,000 customers also pick up the the tolls for That 58,000 kilometers of line So those bills are a lot higher than in some of the urban centers I just came back from a meeting in the in the US and and a number of the large utilities We're talking about how the public is starting to have a negative View towards their utilities and their and their energy cost and this was on On the electric side, but I think it holds well for the gas side as well And you know like our conversation was oh maybe they maybe we need to tell more of the facts like Energy is complex And the facts are important for when you're deciding what you do with policy, but the facts don't make Jason As I'm looking at my utility bill feel any different about it. Yeah, so That that conversation about value is super important because what I'm hearing is You know, we shouldn't build Anything because the costs are gonna go up and in actuality if we can grow our economy The cost may go up a bit, but the share of the wall it's gonna go down I mean you know you'll have more jobs you'll have more taxes coming in and you'll see that Investment unlocks more prosperity for those that are in in your jurisdiction and that's a tough balance to make Uh, and when companies are looking at where they're going to Locate their new plant. Um, they're gonna be looking at things and can I get energy there and how long will it take to get energy there? Without energy first your your economy can't grow So that's a tough balance right now that I'd say we're struggling with because affordability is Such a big part of the conversation We have to also look at how do we offset that with with revenues and with access to a real growing economy and um, you know The prime minister is dealing with that right now figuring out how to bring that investment into or back to Canada When some parts of the world don't you know haven't thought we were maybe open for that investment in the past. Yeah Are you um seeing data centers and hyper scalers and people looking to looking to To to build the infrastructure for the future of AI knocking on your door now are they are they looking at you know trying to set up In your jurisdiction Yeah, I think so yes what I would say but I I think that would probably ring true for anywhere anywhere yeah and and I think as That was kind of where I was I mean the conversation around affordability and and uh Maybe the perceptions towards utilities was directly related to data centers Um and a lot of the public thinking oh their rates were going up because of data centers And if I looked at somewhere like California. I mean, California's had some devastating wildfires right now They've had to rebuild a bunch of that infrastructure. They've also had to build in more resiliency into their into their grid So when a wildfire comes through it doesn't impact as much of it those are investments Well, that's not the data center that's necessarily Causing those investments. It's it's where the where the climate has changed to um, but getting that narrative out That the data centers can maybe help pay for some of that It is pretty important and then you got to be Forward thinking about how you set up your tool structure If a data center is going to come and hook up in Alberta How are they going to offset um that investment that they they cause within the utility system Um, so I mean, that's a long answer. I would say we You know within within this jurisdiction definitely you know, we sit on a on an abundance of resources uh We have a cold climate um I've actually had a really nice fall so far, but I know what's coming Yeah, I did already hit our northern operations. We have people out With some pretty wet snow so we have people out restoring power even now um, but how we're going to attract it and what the tool structure is going to look like Our government has talked a lot about uh, you'll bring your own generation They'll still want a grid connection and that grid connection can benefit the overall grid Same as it benefits them if if their generation goes down So there's uh, there's a win win there uh, but the win for Existing customers is how are they going to offset some of those utility bills? So yeah, yeah, it's complex for sure um, and takes a lot of collaboration to get to the right to the right outcome Yeah, because the reality I guess is that a Abrie your own generation approach only works if they're able to interconnect with the grid for redundancy That's right. Yeah Imagine this is an active conversation in the Alberta market with the The generators the transmitters distributors the government and the system operators Yeah, and and I would yes I You know the the uniqueness of the Alberta market would be like Texas where it's not like described not regulated Um, means you need more people in that in that conversation the advantage I'd say our market has is There is a high entrepreneurial spirit within within this market and uh um You know a big push to get it figured out and move things forward I just have to make sure that you know perfection is not the enemy of good Uh, we that we do get to the right solution because I I do really believe that That will help you know generate prosperity within within any Uh, jurisdiction that hooks hooks those data centers up There's also a lot of like I think we had 20 almost 1.2 times our grids um Peak uh 20 gigawatts ish That was in the queue for data centers And we're peaking at 1314 gigawatts So I mean some of that is just tire kickers. So you got to get through who's who's real and who isn't um And uh, you know that again the Complexity of that is is our challenge our opportunity is i mean There will be load growth and i think that really can lead to lower prices for those customers that are already on the grid In its time So we're going to see load growth. We're going to see more investments. We're going to continue to deal with the challenges around affordability Um, are we gonna have a are we gonna have enough and the right people um are i imagine What that um a potential uh HR requirement is going to be over the long term is one of the things that you're thinking about as well Yeah, I think and and how we attract them into our industry is also key. Okay Yeah, you said did I Playing on the playground think oh, I really want to be a utility executive one day when i grew up um I don't know many that probably would have said that uh, so how do we attract People in our industry as they're coming through coming through school Uh, I'm part of uh association a Canadian Energy Executive Association that does a lot of outreach in the universities and talking about the energy industry and what kind of careers you can make in that industry. Again, I think of the whole energy value chain. I think I described you, you can have 20 careers with one company if you're in the right company. And they can be exciting, like talking with my kids that are one of them's thinking finance. More of the exciting merger and acquisitions, look at the utility industry. They were extremely active on merger and acquisitions for the better part of a decade and a half. So we have one of our vice presidents here, says we're an accounting company that also puts in pipes and wires. Regulatory is exciting. Regulatory is strategy work. So again, coming back to talent, talent will be an issue. And on the electric city side of of the file, it is more technical than most industries. So you need technical people. But we also need those communicators. Like as you're listening to me, it's all like to communicate. And I've gone through a professional or a university education around communication is a skill set that a lot of technical people don't pick up as they're coming through. So getting in early with the universities, I'd even say into the high schools so that people see this is an exciting industry. The again, a panel I was on this morning actually with Deborah Edlin. She talked about zero week and said, you know, you always had the Microsofts or the Googles of the world that were there as, you know, a vendor to the energy industry. Now they're there as a customer and even a developer. Back to the data center is the AI. And a lot of them are having to be their own generator as we just talked about. So they're now a part of the industry. Well, you know, for quite a while, everyone wanted to work for the Googles on the Microsofts and and Amazon's. They're now actually part of our industry because you can't do any of that without without power, without energy or so. So I think it's I mean, I think it's super a super exciting time. And it's going to this industry will look different 10 years from now than what it does today for sure. Yeah. Yeah. So so what might it look like 10 years from now? What might those changes result in in terms of how how the sector looks to somebody on the outside? Yeah. So if we do our our job right, it might not look different to those on the outside. Okay. That's part of the trip. Right. Yeah. The end use customer might look a little different. Like you're I have solar on the roof of my house. So there might be a little bit more interaction with the utility at that end use customer. But even that, I think we think that's going to be big within the utility. We think the technology is really required within the utility. And I definitely think that the person that's really interested in it, I'm I'm still on the fence. You know, I can see I have a real time meter on one of our on, you know, one of our services. And I can see how much is coming off the solar. I can see how much is coming off the grid. And I was super interested when I first got it. We opened it every day. Got a new phone. Not too long ago, which I'll talk value how many times you get new phones. Anyway, and I couldn't figure out how to log into the system because I hadn't opened it in two years. So you know that and I'm a utility executive, right? So I but I do think, you know, you're going to have data centers that are also producers. You're going to have customers that are both, you know, prosurmers are going to be consuming. They're going to be also pushing back into the end of the grid when it comes to the electricity side. And you're going to see a bigger and bigger integration of our gas grids and our electric grids. I draw assets take a long time to build renewables are enabled by having peaking gas plots. So you're going to see this, you know, energy system become even closer together than it is today. I would say it's already pretty linked. But that's even going to become more prevalent as we build build more renewables or have more hybrid type systems when you look at the house level. Right. Right. All right. So Jason, you can't you can't get away from my final question. I ask everybody who comes on the podcast for a book recommendation. We pull all these book recommendations together into our flux capacitor book club. So what book would you add to my reading list and the reading list of the listener? So yeah, I'll I'm going to go I've got two. I'm going to go with one. I'll tell you both though. So and by the way, I I I rarely read books now. I always listen to podcasts. So I'd listen to audio books right of a lifetime by Robert Eiger. So he's he's a CEO of Disney. Is an amazing and also I I do like leadership type books. This one isn't really he doesn't call it a leadership book, but it follows his journey throughout his career and has some amazing stories as he goes through. You can listen to it about 1.2 seems to be where I like this one. Oh, okay. So you've gotten your timing down depending on who's reading it. So this is an audible at 1.2. A audible at 1.2 is where I like experimented with everything from one one five. But I thought that's a really good book. You asked for yourself. I also read CEO excellence. I don't think for anybody who's building their career and looking at what are kind of key for senior leaders. The CEO excellence is based on a bunch of research from McKinsey and it's a very that one I did read. It's a really good. It gives you a picture of what a CEO needs to deal with. Or if you're moving into a job like that, it gives you kind of a roadmap to it. So those are my two. But if I add to pick one, it's the ride of a lifetime. I did say I have five kids. So we have we do have a bit of Disney. So all right. So we're going to add to our reading list. The ride of a lifetime, lessons learned from 50 years as CEO of the Walt Disney company by Robert Eiger. Awesome. A great recommendation. And Jason, thanks for taking the time. It was terrific to catch up. And it's always interesting to hear how things operate in Alberta because it is a unique market in this country. It is. And I would also say for Alberta, it's interesting to get out of Alberta and figure out where those each of those other markets operate. And I, you know, for any of your listeners looking out into the US, I said it in our talk, but utility is different depending on which jurisdiction you're in. Just like a generator is going to be different and a generation mixes different depending on where you're looking. So right. Yeah. Great. Jason, once again, thanks for joining the podcast. Really appreciate it. Great. Thanks for asking. For those that have been with the podcast since the beginning and those that have joined along the way, thanks for listening. Please take the time to rate the podcast on whatever platform you use to listen. And let me know what you think of the flux capacitor. You can find me on Instagram as the Brad Bradley on Blue Sky as at Francis Bradley on LinkedIn and through our website at electricity.ca. The website for this pod is the flux capacitor.ca and it includes links for this episode on the show page. This being episode 126. And while you're there, check out the book club page which provides info on and links to the books which have been recommended by guests on the flux capacitor, including Jason's recommendation, the ride of a lifetime lessons learned from 15 years as CEO of the Walt Disney Company by Robert Eiger. And let's continue the electricity conversation on our Facebook page on Instagram and at electricity.ca. [Music]