Intro 0:05 To better serve their communities and to deliver the benefits of clean energy future, electric utilities are transforming, making the grid smart by harnessing the power of data. To make this happen, utilities must have secure private utility grade broadband connectivity to carry and protect the critical data. At Anterix, we provide the private wireless broadband platform that enables grid modernization. Advancing utilities both individually and collectively, as they realize the scale benefits of a nationwide ecosystem of utility communication networks. Unknown Speaker 0:38 To learn more visit Anterix.com. Intro 0:44 thank you for meeting us at the intersection where the worlds of energy and technology come together. Sheryl Riggs 0:51 Thank you for meeting us at the intersection. For those of you that are listening for the very first time welcome, if our returning listeners Welcome back, I am UTC's President and CEO Sheryl Riggs, today I am joined by a very special guest. Mr. Francis Bradley the he is the president and CEO of the Canadian electric Association. Francis started his career in public affairs and joined CEA as Manager of Public Affairs in 1986. He became involved in CEA's cybersecurity efforts during its y2k initiative and has led IT security efforts since 2000. Francis is also a frequent speaker on industry issues, such as security technology, industry transformation, and much much more. He has been the CEO since 2014, where he is responsible for day to day operations as well as CEA's Strategic Plan and Annual business plan and moving the meter forward. But last but not least, I want to say this is almost a continuation of our conversation, because I had the honor of appearing on his podcast Flux Capacitor capacitor in January 2021. And I am so happy to be here again and to continue our conversation. Also I saw he was our keynote at UTC power grid convention just last October, and he moved the audience to action in many ways. So let's see what our very special guest, Mr. Francis Bradley had to say. So Francis, thank you again, for joining us. Is there anything else you'd like to share about yourself or even correct? Because I know there's a long list of activites. Francis Bradley 2:38 Well, first thing first thing is since since you and I last spoke, we rebranded and so yeah, we shortened it from Canadian Electricity Association to we shortened it to Electricity Canada. Sheryl Riggs 2:49 I love it, fantastic! Francis Bradley 2:49 Then after 130 plus years yeah, we've we've we've shortened the name and Yeah, a couple of things to share about myself. I'm a former runner back when my my knees and my hips were able to do it. I know you're probably probably in or around Washington, DC. That's one of definitely among the top five places. I used to love to run. That's one of the great things about the work that I've been able to do. I've been able to travel all around the world and I've gotten to run in some really wonderful places, you know, in Paris along the Seine and you know, in Central Park in New York, but the Mall in Washington DC is definitely up there on the top ones. And then something else that we didn't chat about this last time but I'm I'm an amateur photographer, and I shoot on film in black and white. On I have a bunch of old classic cameras from the 1950s 1960s I guess probably my newest camera would have been a 1980s era camera but most of the stuff I shoot on is from you know 50, 60 years ago. Sheryl Riggs 3:56 Absolutely fantastic. I tell you. There's a saying that my party say the wonders never cease to amaze me. I mean, my goodness, a runner, a photographer, I hope that you can get a chance maybe you can send some of your work and we can post it on our website because we're turing 75 and we've been celebrating some history and great things that our members do and other champions like yourself. So that is fantastic. And it's I will share that about Washington DC and monument being a great place because we have a lot of members that running when we went to Canada and power grid they absolutely love that spot up the up the street from the hotel. I'm sure you know what I'm talking about. Yeah, Mount Royal. Francis Bradley 4:38 Yeah, yes. Absolutely. Wonderful place to run. Yeah. And yeah, for photos. I actually, you know, you talked about podcasting. I also blog. I blog about photography, black and white photography. And my my, my blog is at photobradley.ca So there you go, in addition to my podcast, which is the fluxcapacitor.ca My photos are at photo bradley.ca Sheryl Riggs 5:04 And so that's it and we are going to check it out definitely after that because that's going to be fantastic. So it has been an let me make sure so it's electricity Canada now correct Francis Bradley 5:14 yes now Electricity Canada. Don't Don't worry everybody, everybody forgets and gets it wrong. I still call I still call Chrysler still I could call Chrysler instead of Stellantis I haven't even exactly clued in yet. So the name will eventually stick but yeah, Sheryl Riggs 5:31 it is very catchy. But for almost 36 years with Canadian electricity CEA or electricity Canada. What has been the biggest change you've seen? And what have you been surprised has stayed the same? That's a pretty I'm excited to hear about that. Francis Bradley 5:50 Yeah, well, I think probably you know what's been the biggest change both at the association but but also with the sector itself is how the diversity has changed so much in 36 years. When I first started here at the association and in the sector, the people that worked in the sector, and also the people that looked that worked in the association did not look like society at large. You know, it really was a very specific subset, tended to be people who were in engineering. You know, I used to make the joke even when I started, I would always be the youngest person in the room. And it was invariably older principally white, and there was almost all men. And that's been a big change. You know, increasingly when I'm visiting my members and you know when I'm when I'm spending time at Association events, I'm more struck by how the sector now looks more like society. It looks more like the communities within which we operate. Which was not something that was you know, really striking when I started at the time, because he just wasn't thinking about it. But you know, now when I look back I realized what a kind of a club, a small tight knit club it was three decades ago and how, you know, it really does look a lot more like the communities within which the companies operate. I mean that that's the biggest change in terms of what surprised me the most. I'd have to say, it's how the sector comes together. Whenever there's a significant stressor, so, you know, when we've got like a major weather event or you know, when, when, you know, one of one of our members is, you know, facing some some crisis or some problem, the way the sector pulls together. The fact that mutual assistance is seemingly baked into the DNA of the sector, unlike any other sector that I can think of, you know, the the knee jerk reaction of most people in the electricity sector when something bad happens somewhere else, the knee jerk reactions, okay, what is it that we can do to help and I've been, you know, watching this up close the last couple of months, specifically with respect to Ukraine, and seeing my members and I know you know, you're seeing this as well but you know, seeing the sector step up and see what we can do to to provide spare equipment what we can do to to provide transformers what we can do to provide expertise to help out it's really interesting and that's that's really surprised me the degree to which this this mutual assistance seems to be baked in at kind of like a, you know, a molecular level. People who were in the sector it's, I find it found it surprising originally, and it stays with me even today every time another major event happens. Sheryl Riggs 8:58 I find that fascinating. Your response because I I have to agree with you. I love what you said at the end of the day, the way you phrased it about the community and looks like the community. That's perfect, because that's really the key and it's good that it looks like a community because to the second part of your answer, that they come together. Yeah, you know, they got to saying many of our members did the first in, last out. Francis Bradley 9:29 Yeah. Sheryl Riggs 9:30 They come together for the community and like you said, it's not a club, and actually it's what our members are doing is so critical. It's so i For me, it's refreshing to know that more people can know about the great work that's being done. They can be involved in the evolution of technology. Growth, and actually, we can come up with better solutions. So that was to me and hopefully to our even listeners, if someone has never listened or know anything about to hear that. Yes, this actually, this energy sector is room for everybody. Yeah, it's not just engineers. It's not just a certain group. It's for everybody. There's some way to contribute. And I just find that fantastic. I actually, I already told you I was gonna steal one thing from you, but I think I'm gonna have to steal that because it looks like the community and I love that. So but as Vice President of Public Affairs, you're responsible for, among other things, the US affairs department, talk to our listeners about why it is important about the energy grid in international terms and why organizations like ours need to work together because you talked about collaboration to address the industry's opportunities and challenges. Francis Bradley 10:49 Yeah, well, you know, it's interesting to sort of step back, and it may seem a little odd at first to folks that we would have like a US affairs group. But you know, when when you look from a North American perspective, at the electricity sector, where our our grids are interconnected, to a very great extent, we've got 30, you know, two three dozen interconnections across the border. And so so there's there's a lot of very tight integration between the regions. But you know, Canada makes up you know, 1/8 of the bulk power system in North America. And so, you know, the importance and criticality of those relationships are such that we spend a lot of time thinking about how we're ensuring that we're managing those relationships and managing those partnerships, particularly particularly well and ensuring that that we, you know, we address how to continually improve the relationships that we have, between Canadian and American entities across the border. You know, it's all about ensuring reliability for the customer, you know, the importance of those integrated rates for reliability for security, you know, for benefits with respect to to the environment as well, you know, in it when we see significant amounts of trade going back and forth across the border, they, they tend to be offsetting GHG, emitting electricity sources, right. And so, so there's, you know, there's financial benefits for keeping costs down in larger markets. There are benefits with respect to reliability, there's benefits with respect to with the environment. And that's only going to increase as we head into the future, particularly, particularly when looking at what does that future cleaner North American grid going to look like? And how is it going to evolve? And, you know, I look at sort of, as take as a microcosm, the the Manitoba, Minnesota relationship, and we now have a tie line between those two regions. And what that interconnection is doing is a surprisingly it's unlocking wind in the Midwest. Right? Because because now they've got the ability to interconnect to a larger grid, that includes essentially storage in the massive hydro reservoirs in the north. So we've got, you know, hundreds 1000 of kilometers away, reservoirs that are able to back the development, more wind in the Dakotas because of that line. And I think that's what the future increasingly is going to look like. You know, if we if we look at a netzero future, that's going to require like on all of the above approach to electricity generation, like some of the stuff is going to be things like offshore wind, how are we going to back that offshore? Well, we're probably going to back that offshore wind with with larger grids, greater interconnection, and probably using for example, the Canadian hydro reservoirs to actually be the backing to the wind. So there's a really great complementarity between the two. We've seen it in a bit of a microcosm between Manitoba and Minnesota. I think that's what we're gonna see on the east coast on the West Coast. You know, as we as we head into that, that, you know, netzero future it's gonna be gonna be increasingly critical that that relationship between the two, Sheryl Riggs 14:26 I agree with you, and I know I kind of just want to ask this question because you, I know in your role, you see the overarching connection. Do you find even with talking with your members that you're still there still some knowledge sharing to make sure that everybody kind of sees this connection so that the collaboration can be, you know, agreeable, because if everyone all the players are not really interested in playing the game, then we kind of get we have some obstacles and that talks to some of the challenges. So do you look at that as a challenge as far as making you know, in your role, making sure that everyone sees the bigger picture, or at least it's willing to talk about the bigger picture? Francis Bradley 15:12 Yeah, absolutely. Ya know, I spend a fair amount of time, for example, in Washington, talking to talking to folks in the government, I'll be there next week. For for the same purpose. And a lot of it has to do with precisely that making sure there's an understanding of that of that relationship and appreciation for that relationship. You're not going to be able to convince, you know, everybody of the benefits of this, you know, we've seen challenges on a regional basis. The reality is trying to cite linear infrastructure. It's just hard, you know, like transmission lines. Or, you know, or pipelines, or highways or any large linear infrastructure. It's hard to cite, but it's going to be important and critical that we do so in the future. And so yeah, making sure that there's an understanding of, of, of the the sort of symbiotic relationship that we have and the importance of it, you know, New York I mentioned is a place that I traveled to with some frequency. You know, New York draws probably on most days, about 1/8 of its power from Canada. Right. And, you know, that's actually a pretty important piece of the puzzle. As you know, you have to actually exactly match supply and demand to keep the grid stable. And so we're not, we're not talking about like 1% or 2%. Here, you know, we're, we're talking in some of those border regions and border states. That there is, you know, there's there's a pretty significant integration of Canadian electricity. And at the same time, in some Canadian grids, it goes both ways. So depending upon the time of day, we're, you know, we're drawing on resources in neighboring US markets. And so just to have a greater understanding of how important that symbiotic relationship is to to both partners. is going to be important. And it's only going to increase in importance as we as we head into a decarbonized future. Sheryl Riggs 17:14 You're absolutely correct. And speaking of that importance, you sit on the steering committee for the electricity sub sector Coordinating Council, the ESCC very important. So one of your focuses during your time at CEA has been security, you know, we've mentioned that which is also at this particular time critical. What is your organization doing to encourage members to connect the dots between cybersecurity and trend and the transformation of our industry as it becomes more reliant on technology and we all become more susceptible to hacking and also talk about the EFCC that is another key area that you're involved in? Francis Bradley 18:00 Sure, yeah. Yeah. And it's the it's cybersecurity, but it's also increasingly physical security. Sheryl Riggs 18:05 Yeah. Francis Bradley 18:06 And, and, you know, one of the interesting things is, is we're seeing a real convergence of the two as well, right? You know, most physical security safeguards today are incredibly reliant on cyber to be able to operate right. So yeah, the two of them come together. Yeah. So you mentioned in the intro that I was involved in y2k. I know for probably a lot of your listeners that's so far in the distant past, but it was the beginning of our focus on cyber issues. It really was the start. And so for 25 years now, you know, we've been we've been working on cybersecurity issues. For 25 years, we've been running a security program here at electricity Canada that it really has become a bit of a sort of a center of excellence with respect to security, cybersecurity, and physical security. I'm also a co chair of a federal run national private sector forum. So I co chair that with the Deputy Minister of Public Safety in Canada and I've been doing that for several years simply because the because we began addressing cybersecurity so long ago and have developed pretty significant expertise. In this area. We've been also assisting other sectors along their sort of their journey along the cybersecurity path and so you know, we've developed through our security programs, you know, this this this, this approach to cyber issues and to physical issues as well where whatever the issue may be, there's sort of this the steps that we go through, we survey what the practices are, we tried to identify what the what the overall best practices are we developed in some cases best practice guidelines and we feed that into what we think would make appropriate standards. So it's really NERC and NERC's, cyber security standards, CIB, standards, we've got a lot of Canadian input into that because we're looking at these all of the time. And at the same time, we've been focusing as well on what are appropriate policy responses and federal policy responses. So I know that I co chair at the National cross sector forum, but you know, we've been making sure that our views are known as we've seen different pieces of legislation move forward. I've appeared before numerous parliamentary committees, looking at different pieces of legislation, some of those pieces of legislation, some of those laws have come into force. And so we've been in putting into into the policy framework around around cybersecurity for for many, many years. And, you know, with respect to the electricity sub sector Coordinating Council, it's been, I think, a really terrific forum. It's been particularly particularly helpful in terms of ensuring that we've got really good integration of where government needs to go and where, where the, the electricity sector needs to go and ensuring that we're all on the same page as as we move forward. And the criticality of ensuring that we're addressing cyber appropriately is only going to increase if we're if we're heading into a decarbonized future. We're going to move from a world where electricity today provides depending upon where you are 20 odd percent of and use energy demand to a future where it'll be 60 or 70%. So the importance of ensuring reliability, the foundation to that being good security and good cybersecurity is only going to increase in importance exponentially. Sheryl Riggs 21:58 Absolutely. I mean, as you were talking, I just couldn't help but think how this is just going to have to be another continuation for UTC and CEA or electricity Canada because I mean, this is everyone that those issues are very issues you're talking about. They're critical for our members. They're critical for organizations. So I don't want to put you on the spot but I definitely offline. I'm going to ask you for a couple of invitations and extend a couple of invitations. We need to share a lot of this valuable information and teaching your expertise to our members and thankfully we have someone who has joined our team was really a good strong focus and cybersecurity coming from NERC. So I think this will be a great time for us to possibly work together on that. I'm just there's so much to talk about. But another part of security you talked a little bit about we talked a lot about but making sure the grid is secure during a natural disaster. Francis Bradley 22:55 Yeah. Sheryl Riggs 22:56 Tell us you know, just a little bit. You know, I know you do a lot of that work on the EFCC but just tell us why is it important to provide a bridge between the federal government and the industry? Francis Bradley 23:08 Well, natural disasters. Boy, your timing couldn't have been better to want to talk about natural disasters. I don't know if you were following the news but we had a pretty severe late winter ice storm here in Eastern Canada. Last week, I was among the millions of customers that were in the dark. So yeah, I'm very cognizant of the criticality and the and the importance of this but, you know, whether it's an ice storm or you know, any other kind of significant event, the ability and I mentioned that a couple of minutes ago, the importance of ensuring that we have the the industry and government working together is is absolutely critical. You know, we've seen when we're at cross purposes, again, I'm dating myself, but you know, looking back to the 2003 blackout, where we had some politicians, you know, suggesting that well immediately say, well, it's it's terrorism or it's it's something that Canadians have done and it has nothing to do with us. You know, the ability to actually ensure that that industry and government first off, are on the same page is vitally important. The, you know, I mentioned before the criticality of continued electricity service is such and it's important and its criticality is, is only going to increase that that we are duty bound to ensure that we work together and ensure that we have unity of effort and that we have unity of our messaging and that we bring everybody everybody together on this. And there's always in these sorts of situations, a critical role that the government has to play as well. Right, and the federal government, but also sub national governments, states and provinces, municipalities, regions and so on. You know, we're, and again, I'm reflecting back on the experience that we just had over the last couple of days here and I live in, in, in western Western Quebec. And, you know, we had a number of fatalities. So, you know, these these sorts of situations, whether it's a natural disaster or, or any other kind of an event, but particularly natural disasters, we're talking about issues of life and death here. And so we can't have anything other than getting everybody on the same page and all of us, you know, moving in the same direction electricity sub sector Coordinating Council has played such an important and critical role of ensuring that we've got that unity of effort and then we've got that that unity of messaging and the unity of effort has been terrific to see how it works, and see the the level of support amongst companies and the the level of collaboration and coordination between the sector and and the federal government. And I mean, I recall back during, you know, one of this very significant hurricanes a number of years ago, on an ESCC conference call where the president at the time President Obama, himself got on one of those calls, just to just to see if there was anything that the government could do. And in fact, there was a suggestion that maybe there wasn't role that the additional government could play and the President indicated that he would do everything in his power to see that that request was was you know, and you know, what he did. And it was it was all about using the heavy lift capability that the Air Force has to move critical supplies around, and they did so. So, you know, that was a very concrete example of an issue that got floated up through the ESCC that immediately got acted upon, and it probably saved lives. Sheryl Riggs 27:04 Amazing. Amazing. I can I know when we met on the first time during your podcast, I was relatively very new, very new CEO. And here we are a couple years later and everything we were saying. It's like we drank from the same Kool Aid. At first, I did not say wouldn't you know, it's not life threatening, but now that's all I say. It's life threatening. It's that critical. So you thank you for bringing that point forward. Because to me that ties it all together for anyone who has thought that this is not significant. It's not worthwhile or you know, juicy or whatever the word is. It absolutely is because it's, yeah, it's life threatening. So life challenges, so what we have time for one more question. Like I said, and I'm because I'm very proud that I was on the pod, you podcast flux capacitor. We talked about the challenges and opportunities of operating an association during a pandemic. It seems that even seems so long ago, but interesting, we did. But we're here that COVID is in the rearview mirror. You know, last year was the first year we were able to get back in person and thank you for coming. But do you see the pivots that we've had to make like meeting and working first virtually, do you see that lasting long term or do you see any other pivots that we made? That is just for COVID? Or do you see it being more of a long term situation even in dealing with security issues, even in dealing with some of the things the way the things that you have dealt with? Francis Bradley 28:47 Yeah, no, absolutely. Talking a moment about how our operations and how we how we approach delivering services to our members has changed forever as a result of of COVID on that, you know, but first on the on the security side of things. Yeah, we, we started off back in, you know, at the very beginning of, of COVID in March 2020. In one of my concerns was, was our ability to continue to effectively exchange critical information and sensitive information about cybersecurity issues. Because we were so constrained previously that there was some things that we absolutely could only do when it was face to face there was concerns about using virtual tools for some, you know, some some kinds of interaction in the exchange of some kinds of information. And we got over those things. And we then went and we figured out how to use virtual tools. And we figured out how to make the most of those to such a degree that that no one to one of my kids good friends. I just heard the other days, hired to in a cybersecurity role working in a SOC, security operations center. And of course, my response to to that news was, Oh, where are you going to be based, you know, where's the SOC going to be? Are you going to be in Ottawa? Are you going to be in Toronto? You can be Montreal. They said no, I probably trying to decide whether it's going to be the basement or my home office. Is it No kidding? So like even even SOCs have gone to a certain extent have gone and gone virtual now. In terms of how we've approached delivering Association services. I mean, that's been the the one upside of Coldwell has a couple of upsides, but like the one big upside of COVID from an association standpoint has been the the ability and the understanding of how we can use virtual tools to interact. And now as we've kind of moved from doing everything online to getting back in person, and now we're at the point where we're figuring for some things actually that's that continues to be a really good tool. And it's a really good compliment. So, you know, there's a lot of things that we used to insist that people would get on an airplane or get on a train and travel to in order to do and if we can limit some of that reduce the cost of members make more efficient use of your time. And so things that that are sort of one way that delivery of training, the delivery of the One Way delivery of information works really well in a virtual on a virtual platform. interaction that's got to be face to face and so, you know, from an association, what we do is probably you know, a combination of both of those things, maybe nothing close to half and half depending upon, you know, what, what committee you're talking about. And so where we've gone is we've kind of moved half of our interaction back in person, but that's stuff that that lends itself really well to virtual tools. We're keeping an eye on virtual tools because we can save time and money for our members. So I'd say roughly 50% of what we used to do face to face has has gone virtual and will likely stay virtual, as as we head into the to the to the future, you know, then and what does that future gonna look like? Well, nobody had even thought of using Zoom five years ago. And so I'm really curious about, you know, five years from now, what is the technology that we're going to be using you know, are we going to be using, you know, more virtual reality for training that that could be really cool. I've seen some, some, some applications. I was in distributech in January this year, and a couple of the boots I put on the headsets did some VR tests. And I think there's some more technology coming our way that is going to enhance the way we work the way we work together. But again, that stuff on the virtual side that I think that tends to be sort of a one way delivery of information as opposed to the interaction. I don't think we're going to be interacting virtually. I I know there's that. I know, people that you know, go on to these different different sites in the sort of like the metaverse, and that might be our future, but I don't think so I think as humans the interaction side of things I think that's always gonna be personal. You can only get so far on on a zoom call or teams Francis Bradley You can only get so far on a zoom call or a teams call. Sheryl Riggs 33:42 I agree with you. I agree with you. And, you know, I'm trying to be open because I tell people, I joke I said I used to get on my kids all the time or every phone call. Prior to COVID. They had to be FaceTime and every call it has to be FaceTime. And it's funny because now after COVID Like I can't even imagine conference calls. Francis Bradley conference calls. What's that? That's right. Sheryl Riggs You know, because No, it's not the same as in person. But it definitely is better than a conference call. And you can, there's a lot of value like you said, because you're able to save time you're able to save costs, for learning for medicine we saw in every aspect of our life so that technology you're right. It is going to be interesting to watch it evolve. Hopefully, hopefully you'll keep keep me up to date. Like I said, I want to talk to you about some more things we can do. But for instance, it has been fantastic catching up with you. Is there anything else you'd like to share before we close this episode? Francis Bradley There's nowhere else I would rather be right now. We Are, the government of Canada has set a 2050 target for our economy to be net zero. set a target for the electricity system to be net zero by 2035. Electricity is going to be the way that we decarbonize the economy. We're at an inflection point right now. With respect to the electricity sector. The the importance and the criticality of electricity is going to increase massively in the future. And you know, as a result of that, yeah, I think I think we're, you know, we're heading into what I like to think will be a very, very bright future. We're heading heading into a cleaner, more sustainable future. And honestly, there's nowhere else I would rather be at this particular point in time. While we're at that inflection point to be able to be part of this is, is absolutely fascinating, and it's invigorating. And as I say there's nowhere else I'd rather be right at this point in time. Sheryl Riggs As I once again I have to agree with you having more of a financial background. Now being a part of the intersect like you said it is it's wonderful. This is the time this is the time and it is it is very special to be part of it. So I agree. There's no other place that I'd rather be as well. So well said thank you so much for taking the time to share with us in the audience. And I am just looking forward to the next time and I'm sure it will be a next time. And thank you so much, Francis. Thank you and hopefully also we'll see you soon. Francis Bradley Thank you, Sheryl. Always a pleasure to chat. Take care. Sheryl Riggs All right. Thank you. Intro Thank you for beating us at the intersection. For more information about the utilities technology Council. Visit UTC.org