What to know about Bremner, the hydrogen-powered community set to be built near Sherwood Park

Alberta is a leading producer of hydrogen in Canada and the Edmonton region is showing great leadership in that growing that industry. In fact, a major energy provider and a prominent land developer have teamed up to build the country’s first hydrogen heated residential neighborhood in the north part of Sherwood Park. With me today are Greg Caldwell and from ASCO and Brad Armstrong with Qualco Communities. Thanks for being with me, starting with you, Greg. This is, of course a pioneering project, very innovative. What does a hydrogen heated home look like? It looks exactly like the houses we all live in today. The only difference is we’re just using hydrogen to heat the home where natural gas goes today. And when it comes to this residential development, Brad, how many homes are we talking about here? So Bremner is designed to accommodate up to 85,000 people. It’s about 37,000 homes over the next 50 years, and we know that there’s a great opportunity that exists here with hydrogen. Is this residential development a way to integrate hydrogen into our everyday lives? Yeah, exactly. So when if ACCO is able to go and build this infrastructure around our region, it can be used for blending and the communities and homes we all live in today with no impact at all. If we don’t change any appliances or pipe or anything like that to a new community like a Bremner which can go to pure hydrogen. And as well as there’s other customers from airports to hospitals to power generating stations that if it makes sense in their business, the infrastructures there for them to to switch, what does it compare when you compare to natural gas, sort of what is the difference in cost here? So my understanding is that, well, ultimately there’ll be very little cost difference between the two, right? But one of the big advantages is on the safety side. When you’re burning natural gas, you’ve got carbon emissions and greenhouse emissions. But when you’re building or burning hydrogen, the only byproduct is, is water. So it’s safe from that perspective. And when you look at the government of Canada’s website, it’s hard to believe, but we still have up to 200 people every year die from carbon monoxide poisoning. So when you go to hydrogen that eliminates that. You haven’t got any any carbon monoxide in where and you don’t have any other greenhouse emissions. Now I I don’t mean to compare here, but we know that the city had, you know, tried to do things differently a little bit with Blatchford and doing like a greener sort of carbon neutral, neutral neighbourhood that has sort of flopped. How is this development different? Anecdotally speaking, we know that people are very interested in reducing their carbon footprint, but they’re not always in a position where they’re able to pay for it, right? So especially in the beginning. So what this does back to your original question for me about the cost. If we can introduce something that’s innovative, that’s sustainable and that works towards low carbon living at the same cost as AS as natural gas, then people are are are going to be really interested in doing it right. And when can we expect this project to start construction, when will shovels hit the ground? Well, it’s a brand new project. It’s a brand new neighborhood in Sherwood Park. And when we’re introducing these new neighborhoods, it generally takes about two years to build all the front end infrastructure and we hope to have the first residents moving into Bremner by 2026. I know that there is a massive hydrogen conference convention happening next week on the 23rd. What can we expect to come out of that, you think? So, I mean it, it is the biggest hydrogen convention in Canada and maybe in North America. It brings close to 10,000 people to the city. So it’s huge for our local economy. And I think what you’ll see is leaders from across the country, federal leaders, provincial leaders, as well as, I’m not sure if you’re aware, the president of Poland’s even coming. And and So what we’re what we’re bringing into the region is people who are interested from all over the world who who want to use our energy, who want to invest in Alberta. Well, there’s certainly lots of exciting opportunities when it comes to hydrogen here. So thank you to the both of you for being here to talk about the the Bremner neighborhood. Thank you. Thanks girl.