ESG Update

Feb 26, 2021

Good morning, everybody. It's Ben Pham, Managing Director of BMO Capital Markets. So I wanted to extend a warm welcome for everyone's attendance virtually with myself and Al Monaco, President and CEO of Enbridge Inc. And we're here to discuss and help you pave a good roadmap for Cao Al and the team and the Board thinks about the ESG strategy and how they incorporate it into the business plans and also in particular how they plan to achieve that 2,050 target of net carbon neutral, which is from our perspective, the gold standard that we're seeing out there, government companies are moving towards that path. Now, it's always good to see you in person, obviously, in this world we're in. But I'm always really looking forward to your comments, especially on such an interesting topic, such as what we're going to talk about today. Well, thanks for having me on, Ben. We appreciate it. And everything is going okay over there. It seems like you're in office this morning and Yes. Over there in Calgary. I've deemed myself essential. So I'm in the office. Okay. And for those that may not known about this topic of ESG or maybe 20 years ago, it was called something else, climate change or sustainability. And you've put out your 19th report last year. So you're in some sense, you're ahead of the game here relative to some other folks that are just putting out a plan themselves. And I think you've been living and breathing this dynamic for some time. You've pipelines are dealing with every day you're thinking about it and it's I think you've been willing for some time. So let's start the discussion a little bit. I got a couple questions and we'll have a bit of time at the end of the session to take questions from investors that are listening in or potential investors of Enbridge. Maybe I can start the conversation and talk about why ESG is why is it important to you? And what are the key messages that you would like to share with the audience this morning? Okay. Well, yes, on that first point you made actually about being involved in this for the last number of years and a couple of decades, it's kind of ironic in a way that everybody is focused on ESG today, but it's been part of what we've been doing for a very long time. I think big picture on your question here, Ben, when you really get down to this, our business is about people trusting what we do, public trust. And so the way we look at ESG is it's almost like an all stakeholder measure of the public's trust in what we do. So it's a way of doing business as you pointed out earlier. And I have to say, you can't achieve this overnight. We've always seen ESG is really an enabler, we call it, of not just how we operate, but in terms of executing our strategy. I think that's why we're a little bit ahead of the pack today on this. If you look at this and you're the expert, but from a capital markets point view, it really is table stakes today. And if you're not world class at ESG and the components that go into it, it's going to impact your cost of equity. And every investor class really has some form of screen over this. So the difference today is you can't hide because there's so many independent agencies and you can say what you want about them, but they really do a detailed job of evaluating performance. So that's kind of the big picture here on the E for us of ESG. It's about safety, environmental protection and now more recently reducing emissions and having public targets. We invest on the safety side about $1,000,000,000 annually. That's a significant amount of capital to put to work. On the S, the way we look at that one is basically about how you engage communities, diversity and your social policy. So we've got a pretty diversified workforce today, about 30% women, 18% ethnic and racial, but we're bumped up the targets now to 40% in 20. The one thing that I would say is important here is what we call life cycle engagement for communities. So whereas you used to go in to a community when you wanted to build a project, and then you're sort of off the right of way and you're gone. Now it's all about starting a lot earlier with communities and going through the life cycle of the project with them. And then on the G side, this is a big focus for us too. Board oversight and management accountability is what that means to us. So comp, the independence of the Board, of course, and then how you report on this, you refer to our sustainability report. So I think that's kind of the big picture of how we see this and importance of it. Okay. And maybe I spent a bit of time looking to your 2019 report, the better date is to head into the event. And correct me if I'm wrong, some targets you've set, 35% reduction carbon emissions by 2,030, carbon neutral by 2,050 and that carbon neutral by that timeframe. Maybe address really what's the elephant in the room like? What are the biggest sources of covering missions in your business today? And to some extent, you can flip that and think about what are the greatest opportunities for you in terms of reducing emissions and getting towards those targets? Yes. Okay. Well, I think a bit of context here, it's a good question, is important though because I mean we're not a big emitter. If you look at the energy value chain in general, we're about the midstream component is about 2%. But that doesn't mean we're not focused on this and leading on it, and you saw that with the setting of our targets here. We're split about in terms of our emissions and what we generate probably evenly between liquids and gas. So on the gas side, it's essentially our compression for Scope 1. Those are Scope 1 emissions. And on Scope 2, it's essentially our liquids pumps. So what we need to do in terms of generating electricity in order to move the pumps. So, yes, I have to say in terms of those targets, just for your audience here that, that was sort of the easy part. Where we spent most of our time though was how we actually achieved the targets. So we came down to what we call pathways. So there's 4 ways to get to the numbers. Number 1, modernizing our assets, certainly from an emissions point of view, so investing capital there. Technology is a big one. So think about predictive analytics and other sources of technology used today to reduce the volume and intensity of the power you're using. Another big one for us will be displacing grid power and that's using solar facilities at our location. So take a pump station or take a compression station and essentially putting some solar power in there because we control those sites. Buying lower carbon emitting sources through natural greening of the grid that we're seeing out there. And if we need to, if that's not enough, there's always natural offsets or buying credits. The biggest thing about this, Ben, is the model that we've created that essentially optimizes between those opportunities to reduce emissions. So, you've got variables like what's the price of carbon, how fast are things going to change in regulation, how much do you need to invest, how you're going to recover that capital. So we put that all into the model and we optimizing we're optimizing between those sources. Not to carry this on too long, but there's also Scope 3 Missions. I talked about Scope 1 and 2. But the way we deal with Scope 3 is we've got renewables investments, hydrogen, RNG, which aren't actually offsets to Scope 1 and 2, but we're going to capture those and report Scope 3 as well. So that's how we look at that. Okay. Thanks for that. And what about evaluation and maybe just some extent linked to the governance and as you report to investors, how do you plan to evaluate the ESG performance versus your goals? I guess it's kind of like a report card that you're looking at or the Board is looking at at the end of the day. And then also linked to that really, can you remind me what about linking these goals to executive compensation? Like what's the story around that? Okay. That last one is really important because frankly, that's what's going to drive our performance and being accountable. So the first thing you need to do when we've got these broad targets, like you mentioned, the net 0 and the 2,030 target, you've got to embed those in the business. And so we naturally do that anyway because each business has annual scorecards. We call it the balanced scorecard, which is basically operating and financial measures and a bunch of them within the scorecard. So we capture our targets around emissions and diversity in those scorecards. And so that flows directly through to executive compensation. And in a way, Ben, the scores you get on ESG around those agencies that evaluate you, it's to me, that's kind of reflected in your equity valuation. I think though another aspect of this today is the direct linkage that I think you're going to see between ESG performance and your cost of debt. And you may be aware that we have now had the first in our sector anyway sustainability backed or linked bank debt and where the cost of funding there is tied to your ESG performance. So I think you're going to see that become more prevalent. And frankly, we like that additional scrutiny, if you will, or performance benchmarking to make sure that we are tracking to our goals. I think it is a big signal to the market of linking these reductions to your maybe next talk about perhaps how do you ensure these EG targets or policies are reflected in your strategy or potential projects you look at? Like, have you how do you make sure you imagine seeing the Board is constantly thinking about this, as you evolve here in the next couple of decades? Well, this is a great question because it's behind the scenes to your audience here and yourself, but it really is a key part of strategy. And I got to take you just a bit of a bit back here. This the strategy process here is essentially a year long engagement between management and the Board. So we start the year with, okay, what's our current position? And we do this annually, by the way. So we're constantly putting it together. So current position, what's the environment around us? What are the fundamentals telling us? And what is our corporate risk assessment telling us are the big issues. We bring in some external people. So EV adoption, for example, we'll have somebody talk about that and supply and demand globally of energy. We try and do some high level scenario planning based on that. So think about 5, 10 years out and then each year, we'll course correct on strategy. I think it ends up though the way it comes out to you and the audience here, Ben, is the 3 year financial outlook, and we have a plan that sort of backs that up. But another critical element that we talk about with the Board is, okay, we've got strategies, but what's going to enable those strategies? So it's always been 3 things for us: talent management, so people technology, because that's extremely important to enabling your strategy and ESG. And we've been using those 3 for at least a decade. And an illustration of how ESG has been on our minds for a very long time is really through a few actions. So if you go back and look at our asset mix over time, you've seen how it's sort of morphed here. We got a lot more natural gas today and we got a fairly substantial renewables business. So in a real simple form, we're trying to align the asset mix of the company to the energy fundamentals we see out there globally. Another part of what spawned here, I think, from this strategy look and enablers is how we engage with indigenous groups. That's evolved. And then more recently, as we were talking about carbon pricing, that's probably more of the last 3 years that's developed. So basically, the Board and management go through this process annually. We do quarterly updates to see how we're coming along. And I think to go to the governance part, which I think you mentioned, so we'll have each Board Committee oversee certain aspects of ESG. So we've got a corporate social responsibility committee who looks after certain parts of it, Safety and Reliability, AFRC, the Audit Committee and then, of course, Governance. So each of these committees oversee their part of it. That's how the governance framework and sort of the interaction with the Board works on this. It just seems myself, yourself, everyone else is working more. And I work with all of this ESG planning, but it's good to see that. Maybe let's switch a little bit to government policy and maybe on the Canadian side, you've seen our prime minister for those folks not may not fall on the Canadian side so much as the proposal for carbon taxes to go up quite significantly, in fact, to $170 a ton by 2,030, which is I think the most ambitious carbon tax out there in the world. And someone can email me, correct me if I'm wrong on that really. Clearly, this is probably an increasing friction or cost to you, assuming your carbon emissions data is sitting here, how. But how do you think about really impacting your cash flows if this carbon tax is actually pushed through and what are some of the mitigants that you can utilize? Well, okay, great question. And you're right, It's probably the most I don't know if you want to call it progressive or largest carbon levy globally that I can think of. But in any case, again, we're not a large emitter. And the other sort of ameliorating factor, mitigating factors only applies to Canadian operations. So probably 50%, 60% of what we do is in the U. S. I think the other mitigations generally though are the commercial model. In many cases, it's small component of the toll, but also pass through to customers. So for example, on a fuel charge, that is applied to our utility customers in Ontario as one example. We currently I think if you look at the net amounts roughly in the range of $25,000,000 primarily in the liquids business. So it's a relatively small number for us in the bigger picture. It doesn't mean we're not focused on it, but it's a small component. I think I got to tell you, Ben, the bigger issue that I see in terms of carbon tax is what it means for the competitiveness of your industry. So it's critical that our progressiveness or the desire to imply carbon taxes doesn't disadvantage the industry. And the reason for that is there's countries, as you know, that don't have policies like that in place. So I think that needs to be incorporated in how governments think about this. And what we've heard so far, which I think is right is we got to have border adjustments to levelize these impacts for countries that don't have those policies. Otherwise, you're really putting your own industry in a tough spot. In a way, this is already accounted for in Article 6 of the Climate Accord, but that's been a little tougher to come together and actually be implemented. So that's how we see the impact on our spend. Okay. And maybe switching to the U. S. And sticking with government policy and new President, you have a big U. S. Business as well and overall mix and with Biden's focus on climate change. What do you think are the opportunities and risks for you? Well, overall, if you listen to the new President, he's been saying this for a while, his four pillars are jobs, diversity, COVID and a couple of other things that and climate, of course. So my overall observation, Ben, I'm not trying to sound like an expert on this, but if you're reacting to changes in the administration like this every 4 years or 8 years, you really got to question your strategy. And I actually feel that we're in a pretty good position here. I mean, we deliver to the best markets, and those markets are not going away as you've heard me say before. But more importantly, we're already part of this transition. I think we're really well positioned. But the bigger issue here and this is maybe the most critical thing that we all got to get our heads around is the U. S. In particular, is dependent on conventional energy in any scenario. The fact is economies, global economies or the U. S. Economy are driven by affordable, reliable, secure energy. And it's critical, absolutely critical to the health and social well-being of how we live our lives here in North America. The Texas emergency is probably an unfortunate, but most recent example. And the issue that I see with is particularly with deregulated markets like that one is the reliability is not being priced in. And you really saw that I think come to the fore. So I think you asked, okay, well, what are the risks? I think number 1, it's building and expanding infrastructure is a lot harder as you all you very well know. That's going to hamper reliability. It's going to hamper the economic recovery and, of course, jobs. So I think businesses, as you'd expect, needs to have transparency before they invest capital. The opportunities though, I think, are really in front of us. So I mean, we're not seeing this yet, but the value of assets in the ground, if you look at our map today, those assets cannot be replicated. So the strategic positioning of where your assets go to those key markets is a big driver, I think, of that increase that you're going to see. We've got luckily many opportunities to expand, extend the existing assets. So greenfield projects are harder to do or not likely to be done for a bunch of reasons. So I think it helps to have assets that spawn these opportunities. Natural gas, this is probably the biggest point here. It really enables in many ways renewables growth because of the way it follows load and can really form baseload power. The other opportunity, if you've been covering the Permian, certainly Canadian heavy oil is going to be even more important to U. S. Refiners going forward. So I think those are the opportunities and along with being what I'll call it, the forefront of technology, I mean, we've been investing in renewables for 20 over 20 years. Our existing infrastructure is really going to support the hydrogen economy. People forget that transportation and infrastructure is going to make hydrogen go around ultimately. And I think you've seen us move quite aggressively into renewable natural gas. So that's how I look at that issue. I mean, it's an interesting topic or comments you mentioned, really, if you think about steel in the ground and you're right, it's just so hard to build new infrastructure in this marketplace. And you look at your footprint, North America looks well positioned to benefit for any sort of expansion needs going forward. And I think we always take it for granted need for energy really. We only complain when the lights are down or running out of gas. And I looked at pictures in Texas, folks burning culture to stay warm. I mean, it's incredible, really the dependency we have on infrastructure and then how you guys could connect to that. And you look at even your name Enbridge, it's Enbridge Connect Energy, that's energy transition, right? I want to insert a question from the audience because we're staying with the U. S. So I'm just going to read it off verbatim here. How did Enbridge fare with the recent cold weather event in the U. S? The natural gas, that's a great question. The natural gas transmission assets actually performed extremely well. We had basically no hookups and I'm not going to or holdups at all. I'm not going to say it was easy. Obviously, with power down and buildings and backup power going down, we had to maneuver, let's call it, in order to keep the gas control business or business center running full time, but we've got contingencies for that kind of thing. So generally that worked extremely well. We've got a couple of wind farms there, which obviously froze up for a little while, but we got back up pretty quick. The team did a good job. So I think overall, we fared pretty well. On the oil side, we had to turn down volumes simply because we didn't have power. We did a little bit of that on the Seaways system and a little bit of that on Flanagan, but it got back up right away. So we don't expect a huge impact from all of that. Okay. So I know for the longest time, it just seems there's ongoing debate around oil, Pico oil and we're not we've gone through that. Wondering if we've been talking a lot to investment community is on the gas side and durability of gas demand long term. You got this interesting gas utility in Ontario, which is where I live. And as I mentioned before, we've had our heat on Kummetall all year, even during the summertime. So we're obviously reliant on Enbridge Gas. But what do you think about the thought process here with some pundits talk about banning gas to the home? And how do you think about the long term durability of your gas utility? Well, Ben, let me put it this way. And I guess maybe we have to say this, but I feel an affinity to the utility because I ran it for a while. It's a crown jewel asset for us. It's the largest and fastest growing gas utility in North America by a margin. And I can just tell you many would love to own this business. I guess maybe to your question though, I think it goes to this notion of banning gas hookups that's being talked about frequently. And I understand it. And as you heard earlier, we're very focused on emissions and climate and so forth, and we have a renewables business. But I think this tends to be politically popular, but comes with risks and challenges that really need to be taken seriously. I mean, I think in Ontario, this has actually been a pretty good test case for us. And because we've talked we've been talking about that kind of scenario, shutting down gas for as long as I can remember. But the harsh realities are this. Natural gas is the most reliable and lowest cost energy source, whether it's heating, cooking, and it's about 60% cheaper. So let's start with that one. If you look at manufacturing and petchem industry, they are it's the most cost effective and reliable there. The infrastructure is in the ground and it's essentially paid for. Whether you look at the storage, the distribution and the long haul pipe that gets the gas there. So replacing a system like that in a congested area like Toronto, for example, is just unfathomable. But the one that always I think of is and Texas again was a good example. If you were to replace the peaking capability of natural gas with electricity, you would need 80,000 gigawatts, which is roughly 2, 3 times that the amount in Ontario today. So that's how I look at this. But I will say that natural gas supporting our renewables targets, I think, can also be quite a strong lever. So that's how we assess that. I would say how people should look at this is give natural gas a fair shake on reducing emissions. It's been the major contributor to lowering emissions in the United States. Again, it works really well with renewables. It's going to be part of the RNG solution. Conservation has been a big impact in our own business. And of course, LNG. And if you look at how LNG can be created on in North America with low emissions standards being applied, it can really be a source of reducing global emissions. So sorry for the long answer, but that's the way we look at it. No, I think it's definitely worth discussing in a bit more detail. It's something that I think at least my conversations has been some modest concern about and we as capital markets professionals and I'm always flattered to hear that you're considering me an expert in some of your earlier commentary on the markets. The debate is going to continue. But maybe let's go back to oil for a second here. And there's some pretty scary figures coming up from BP or these energy agencies around where oil could go in 2015. I think there's one scenario where oil is going to drop 80% from today. I'm not asking around what your views on that specifically, but I think it's worth going back to your Investor Day, you had some pretty interesting charts around, let's just assume North American demand has dropped. And that could be a probabilistic scenario, but you have emerging markets, the middle class emerging, they're going to want to fly. I think it's a very logical outcome of what we're going to see. So when you think about your footprint in the Canadian oil sands and how do you think about your position to benefit from that exportation? And is there anything you need to do strategically to lever yourself to that longer term dynamic? Well, I think you're right to point this out. There's no I don't think there's any argument that North American demand is going to turn down. But as you're pointing out, global energy demand is going nowhere but up. We know why. Population growth, growth in the middle class, greater urbanization. I don't think anybody is really arguing that energy is going to grow by roughly 20%, 25% by 2,040 depending on who you listen to. But again, the reality is that our economies are driven by low cost reliable energy. And if you look at any of the scenarios, including the most drastic in terms of carbon legislation, which would still need a lot for that to actually happen. It's very clear that all sources of energy are going to be required. As we keep saying, it's going to take a long time for that equation to change materially. So natural gas is going to play an even larger role by 2,040. Crude oil, I think you're right, probably tapers off in North America, but globally, it still grows. I think fundamentally, the biggest change to get to your point and how it affects us, Commodities have transitioned now to global connectivity. We know that developing economy energy demand has growing substantially. It will continue to do that. And oil and gas supply growth over that same period though for U. S, Canada and OPEC has gotten even better. If you look at all of the fundamentals on this, it's pretty clear that North America has got this great advantage. So you got global growth in energy and you got North America who is in an ideal position to supply that energy at very low cost. We've got technology, infrastructure and resources. So what we're doing essentially is trying to point our infrastructure more and more to export markets. And you saw I mean, we did this probably, I guess, now 10, 15 years ago, pointing those oil sands barrels to the Gulf Coast. That's where heavy oil refining capability is located, and they're the most competitive globally, maybe aside from 1 or 2 areas. The infrastructure we've got along the Gulf Coast for natural gas is extremely well positioned to feed LNG and then of course export gas into Mexico. So I think for us, the export strategy, if you want to call it that, has been developing for a long time. And I think that's where the future is for the industry in terms of gaining global market share and our opportunity to be a big part of that. Okay. Maybe, I mean thanks for those comments. It's good to encourage folks to go back to some of the slides at the Investor Day, there's some pretty interesting charts there to look at. First Nation communities, I think we got to address that during this session. I mean, it's I'll just talk about the E environmental aspect a bit about let's maybe switch a little bit to the F or relationships. And how do you foster and manage that part of the equation, First Nations communities, because it's clear that over the last 15 years, it's been a more vocal voice in the pipeline industry. There's been legal cases based First Nations Community Step 1. It's definitely important to maintain that. But how do you manage that and how do you foster those relationships? I think the biggest change that we have, I guess, undertaken and it really has to do with something that is going to sound esoteric, but it takes time and that is building respectful relationships and it's hard for people to put that in their financial model. But essentially, it means you've really got to train your staff and the people that are engaging with tribes in the U. S. Or First Nations Metis here in Canada to understand individual cultures and governance. I think that's the key thing. You've got to really get a feel for their connection to land and water and the environment. That I think is the basic understandings that you need and maintaining and earning and maintaining that trust over time by delivering on what you promise. So all of that happens before people focus on the economics and training and jobs and all of that, but you need to start with building trust, otherwise, you're not going to get to the economic framework. So again, it's listening very early on in the process to their concerns. I would say the big thing is incorporating their feedback. In many, many cases, they have a much better understanding around local environmental water and land issues. So take that feedback, put it into the design, involve communities in the construction and monitoring process. That has worked extremely well. And I would say you've got to make sure that the opportunity sets are included in your supply chain work so that it becomes normal or usual to have them part of the contracting effort on big projects. So Line 3, for example, we've got roughly $600,000,000 of contracting opportunities. So these are businesses that partner with us to get the project done. It has been unheard of in the past that would be okay, you have some jobs for First Nations and tribes in the U. S, but these are real economic partnerships when you get into supply chain. Okay. Let's talk about people. And I don't need to spend a lot of time on safety. I mean, you look at your data, I mean, it's a very strong safety record. But let's talk about the D and I diversity, human capital is quite important, I think, organization such as yourself. And can you remind us what are your key goals in diversity and inclusion? And what are you advancing there in your workforce? I hate to sound like we're saying we've thought about all this before, but we've always thought of diversity maybe in a broader sense. It's been amplified here over the last year or 2, of course. But to us, diversity means diversity of race, obviously, but and gender. But it's also about experiences and thought. And I always had the view that when you're sitting around the table and in a company like ours, you've got everybody around there trying to battle over a problem. Diversity of thought, experience and history is really big in terms of making good decisions. And everybody should feel safe at work and included. I think that's just part of who we are socially, but also good for business. I think you saw this in the last year or 2. I think CEOs, executives on diversity need to lead on that issue. We can't speak to every issue out there socially, but certainly this is one we need to lead on. And part of that, what I have found Ben is educating again ourselves on those issues. And we talk to our people quite a bit. We train ourselves on issues like unconscious bias. And you really kind of got to put yourself in the individual shoes here because we, myself in particular in this case, we can't relate to many of the challenges that we see in Black people or gender issues. So basically today, we've got about 30% representation women, 21% minorities. The new goals we just set a little while ago are 40% for gender and 28% for minority. So we're bumping them up. And by the way, these objectives or targets, they apply to the Board as well. So it's really got to be top down. And as we talked about earlier, you got to tie this to compensation as well, those targets. So that's how we look at D and I. Okay. I know you mentioned the hydrogen, I'm switching gears and now renewable natural gas and I want to touch on that a bit because that is the topic of the day or topic of the year, how you want to frame it. But let me ask you, can you maybe set the backdrop for opportunity that you see in R and G and hydrogen? Okay, sure. Let me see here where to start. The good thing about hydrogen and RNG is you're talking about proven technologies. It's not bleeding edge stuff here, it's been done. And the way we look at it is we can capitalize on our existing assets, all four platforms, whether it's utility, transmission, liquids or of course the renewables business. And we're kind of building on what we already have and are good at and we're not just bringing capital to the table. So the way we've always approached this, Ben, is what we call low cost optionality, so that you can make sure you're recovering the capital through commercial good commercial models before you go too far down the road. So hydrogen, for example, our view on that is excellent opportunity to reduce emissions, particularly in hard to abate areas. Obviously, hydrogen today is higher cost. Blue hydrogen is somewhere in the $4 to $5 per kilogram, green hydrogen $5 to $7 but it's going to come down. And so that's what I mean by low cost optionality, getting in early so that you can have the option to partly this into a bigger opportunity. There's a few technical challenges with hydrogen that you're familiar with, metallurgy, for example, you need more compression. There's some safety issues around flammability. But I think starting now and moving forward on this, we've got a couple of pilot programs, 1 in Ontario and 1 in Quebec that we're going to be moving forward with. I think it's going to be a great outcome for us because in the end, hydrogen is going to need infrastructure. And that's where we come in. And so I think on the green side of hydrogen, we're already a large renewable generator, so there's good match there. And on blue hydrogen, again, natural gas transmission is going to be a big part of that. So I think we're moving along well there. The RNG one, that's a higher cost, but certainly being well supported today by policy. We could see 5% of the gas market being renewable natural gas. And again, I hate to say we're have already been working on this again, but we've got 6 projects in operation or in construction right now. And who knows, maybe we can parlay that into a lot more what are what are your thoughts on nuclear playing a bigger role or even replacing gas as a reliable energy source? This is great. Glad you worked that one in. First of all, it is the answer for many reasons. I think the problem is, let's put cost aside. Nuclear is by far the highest cost form of replacing, let's call it conventional energy. But the permitting problems that relate to this, and we've studied this at length, you're looking at roughly 10 years to 15 years to permit nuclear. So it is a very good answer. And I think the technology has really come along, particularly with small nuclear capability. But it's again, it's probably one of those things that I would put further even further out than the other ones we talked about. Okay. Let's talk about renewables next because sometimes that gets lost and over. Henrik's story is just really the size of your renewable business is actually quite significant. Obviously, you're a big company, so it looks small when you look at that lens. Can you remind us what your strategy is in the renewable side? And I know you put up targets of $1,000,000,000 CapEx a year. Matt, that just that seems quite small relative to $300,000,000,000 spend a year. So I'm just I'm always wondering or curious why not why isn't a bigger number? We made it too big a number, you'd be the first one to be about it. But the way I look at this is, this has been a very good couple of decades of building up our capabilities in this area. And I would say the good news is this is now a core part of our business. It's the 4th platform. So I think on the growth question you're asking, I think the short answer is yes, we could easily spend more. But in this frothy market, you've got to be focused on return and not size. And there's so much capital chasing this. And I have to be honest, we've lost a lot of bids on renewables because of that. So I think we're not going to sacrifice returns given the model we have. And but the bigger reason is Ben, I think we don't need to because we've got so much in the hopper right now. As you know, we've got 3 projects in construction now in France. And those are extremely strong in terms of their commercial underpinnings. They're going to cash flow by roughly 2022 to 20 24 once they get done. But the other good news is we've got a lot of development opportunities. So the ramping project that we put in a couple of years ago has got a big expansion to it. We've won an opportunity offshore France again Dunkirk. But the big one I think going forward is going to be floating offshore wind. And we're working on a pilot right now again offshore France on the south. Solar cell power is another big one. So I would say, we're in decent shape. We think we can spend $1,000,000,000 a year for the next several years, achieving the criteria that we want. And so that's really it becomes it's a matter of can you generate the returns and where do you make that cut off. Okay. Alan, it's related to the question that's on the audience. I just wanted to weigh again, be mindful of the time here as well as the question is, does the fact that so many renewable projects where Enbridge has been active are done with partnerships hurt or help your ability to generate returns above your hurdle rates? Are there enough projects over the medium to long term to satisfy all the capital that are chasing these projects? I know it's a long question. I hope you got most of it there. Okay. I think I got it. I'm going to focus a little bit on the freight here. I think the JVs that we've done have been extremely helpful for us because remember, we've done a lot of work offshore pipelining in our number of decades of being in business. I would put offshore wind in the not too difficult category technically, but we still have a lot to learn. So over the last decade or so, we've partnered with people that are really good at this. And we bring our expertise to the table in terms of development operations and construction. So we've got some really good partnerships. But in terms of the return though, I think the best example of that Ben is our partnership with Canadian Pension Plan and how we've brought them into the onshore project. So sold down a bit of the interest and we were able to generate some higher returns overall from bringing them into the project. So that's how we would look at bringing them in. And as I said earlier, I think we've got enough going on here for the next 3, 4 years. And my guess is things will turn around, things will get less frothy going forward. So I'm happy that during this period of time here where we've got all these projects in the works, again, we don't have to chase stuff. Okay. And I know that there's a number of questions here and I want to be mindful of that time again. Maybe we can take 1 or 2 more. Al, does that sound good to you? Sure it is. Closing thing. Yes. Yes. So this one's about, do you have any procedures to ensure ESG compliance of partners in non operating minority projects? Boy, you've got a bunch of good questions from the audience today. I would say that is probably our biggest challenge, because when you're not operator, it's hard to sort of imply every rule that you have and procedure that you have. But the way we deal with that challenge is through our representation on the management committees. And frankly, before we get into the deal, we try to make sure from a contractual point of view that that's covered off. I would say though, generally speaking, particularly in the European projects for renewables, great companies. And so I'm not as worried about that consistency with what we do on ESG. Maybe a little bit behind, I would say, in the U. S. And in terms of everybody getting on the ESG page. So that's something we have to work with. But we can have influence, but it's not perfect. Okay. And the better question is, in time looking upstream, and I guess this has been referenced to the producers, will you differentiate or discriminate the molecules you transport, I. E, will you only work with align partners that meet your ESG standards? Well, of course, we're going to have to focus a lot more energy on that going forward. It's one thing for us to have our own ESG standards, but obviously, that's sort of the next evolution here. I have to tell you on the upstream side, let's just use liquids for a moment. Majority of our supply on the liquid side, for example, I think about Suncor and CNRL and all the other big players, Cenovus, that makes up a very big chunk Imperial, a very big chunk of the supply base in Western Canada. And they're certainly very much aligned with focusing on R and D to reduce intensity. And then the other things that we talked about around diversity inclusion and ESG generally. So the answer is yes, we will have to look at that, but I'm pretty confident that our customers have very strong progressive thoughts on this. Okay. Well, time flies quite quickly here, Alan. Is there anything that maybe we may have missed that you'd like to close off here? For those with questions on the Board still, feel free to reach out to the IR team with outstanding questions. Al, anything you'd like to share? Maybe just given your topic here today is ESG. And by the way, thanks again for doing this. It gives us a great opportunity to talk about what we can do, not just ourselves, but as industry. But I think number 1, ESG has got to be part of the business. It's not a check the box. Secondly, more and more ESG, it just can't be a nice to have. It's a must. And that means that I think in our case, it's a differentiator. I think others are going to have to catch up. And so and maybe just last point, I encourage investors to really look at the independent sources on this. I mean, you've got our stuff, Ben, and I'm sure everybody can look that up on our website, but really look at what the other agencies are saying about what we do on ESG. I think that'll be the most obviously the most credible source. And I think we've got a good record that is coming through in all of those scores that you're seeing today. Absolutely. And that's that 4th quarter and you score quite highly on the ESG score thing. And I encourage listeners again to look at that 2019 report, it's just around the corner 20th there. And I'll really, really thank you for your time. It's been a great conversation. A lot of good questions answered. Thanks for your time. Well, look, Ben, we enjoy coming on with you here. Obviously, when people that cover us with strength and with knowledge of our industry, we're always happy to come on and talk about our business. Okay, great. And for listeners, hope you've enjoyed the conversation with Paul Monaco, President and CEO of Enbridge and ESG and where they're going long term on net carbon neutral targets by 2,050. Stay safe, stay healthy, stay positive everybody.