Based on the keynote speech delivered at the Clean Energy Summit in Burnaby, Vancouver, British Columbia, 25- 27th of February 2026
For more than a decade, the global conversation on climate and energy has focused on frameworks. Paris delivered the diagnosis, COP processes translated science into targets, and regulators around the world began constructing the institutional wiring of the transition.
But frameworks alone do not decarbonize economies.
At the Clean Energy Summit in Burnaby, British Columbia — a region that represents a living laboratory for the energy transitions — one question echoed repeatedly across discussions among policymakers, scientists, and industry leaders:
How do we move from regulation to activation?
For many years, our focus has been on building the architecture of carbon pricing systems, disclosure frameworks such as TCFD and ISSB, and governance structures that integrate climate risk into economic decision-making.
An essential regulatory wiring. Without it, transitions would have lacked credibility, transparency, and financial legitimacy.
Yet we have now entered a different phase of the transition.
The challenge is no longer designing the systems. The challenge is turning the switch.
Regulation and activation
Energy transitions are shaped by a natural tension between two forces. Regulation is the institutional mechanism designed to assess risk, create guardrails, and ensure stability. Activation is the momentum required to build, deploy, and scale new technologies across entire economic systems. Both are necessary.
Philosophically, the relationship is captured by Plato’s allegory of the chariot. Regulation is the charioteer, holding the reins and preventing disorder. Activation is the horse, the source of power and movement. A horse without a charioteer runs off a cliff. A charioteer without a horse goes nowhere. The real challenge of the transition lies in knowing when to loosen the reins.
A transition to a new phase
What makes this moment particularly complex is that the landscape has shifted dramatically.
We are no longer operating in a pilot phase of energy transitions. Global electricity demand is entering what many analysts describe as an electricity supercycle, driven by the obnoxious expansion of digital infrastructure, data centers, electrified transport, and new industrial demand.
The transition is no longer simply about replacing fossil energy with renewable energy. It is about powering an entirely larger system.
This makes the balance between regulation and activation more delicate than ever. Moving the chariot too slowly delays the transition. But powering up the wrong solutions will generate costly inefficiencies and strategic detours.
We have already witnessed such oscillations, from the rapid expansion of electric vehicle markets without fully exploring the hydrogen value chain to decades of retreat from nuclear energy, followed by its sudden reappearance in policy agendas. Strategic swings like EV, H,2, and nuclear dismantling consume time and capital that transitions can no longer afford.
What is needed instead is a deliberate and very rapid shift from policy readiness to operational deployment.
Canada as a living laboratory
Few places illustrate this transition more clearly than Canada, and particularly British Columbia. Over the past decade, some of the most sophisticated regulatory frameworks supporting large-scale clean energy transitions have been built here. What makes the region particularly interesting is that it is going several steps further, from regulation to the activation of energy transitions everywhere.
District energy projects across B.C. demonstrate how to transform local resources into scalable infrastructure. Sewage heat recovery systems in Vancouver transform waste into thermal energy. Seasonal solar storage systems and energy-sharing communities are emerging across Alberta and Ontario. These are not theoretical models. They are operational systems demonstrating how the transition moves from policy ambition to physical deployment.
The industrial switch
Burnaby itself illustrates this dynamic. Recent investments in grid expansion and energy infrastructure are turning the region into a gateway for the industrial switch, the point at which clean electricity begins to decarbonize energy-intensive sectors.
Three technological pillars are emerging within this ecosystem. Hydrogen infrastructure enabling zero-emission heavy transport. Thermal recovery systems are proving the efficiency of urban energy networks. Carbon capture technologies are transforming decades of climate science into industrial-scale solutions.
What we are witnessing here is the movement from theory to hardware. Yet hardware alone will not carry the transition.
The role of intelligence in energy systems
The next phase of energy transitions will depend not only on regulations and infrastructure, but also on the intelligence capable of orchestrating increasingly complex energy systems and their real-time components.
As electricity demand accelerates, the cost of expanding physical grid infrastructure continues to rise sharply. Building more copper wires and concrete poles alone will not solve the problem. Digital intelligence is the essential layer of these transitions.
Flipping the switch here means activating innovation at scale, moving beyond legacy operating models into systems that can think, perceive, adapt, and respond in real time. The shift is being driven by the adoption of artificial intelligence to optimize energy distribution across grids, to simulate the impact of new infrastructure before it is built, and to orchestrate value chains that solve old, almost insurmountable issues.
At the core of this transformation is the emergence of an AI-powered cognitive infrastructure, in which agent-based systems are redefining how energy networks operate. Autonomous agents can balance load in real time, representing everything from battery storage facilities to entire neighborhoods of electric vehicles. Intelligent load management systems can trigger events, verify peak consumption reductions, and make those actions auditable.
The impact extends further. AI agents can continuously monitor grid sensors, detect anomalies instantly, and recommend or execute corrective actions, rerouting electricity through the safest pathways and restoring power in seconds. They can anticipate failures through predictive maintenance by identifying subtle signals before they escalate. They can even enable new models such as peer-to-peer energy trading.
What this unlocks is a fundamentally different energy system. Demand management can be digitized to reduce peaks and accelerate decarbonization. Grid resilience can be strengthened to withstand climate shocks. Distributed energy assets can be integrated into smart grids to maximize the use of renewable sources without requiring massive infrastructure expansion.
Probabilistic AI allows operators to move beyond conservative safety margins, unlocking unused capacity, reducing waste, and lowering emissions. The shift is from reaction to prevention, from rigidity to adaptability. These tools do not replace infrastructure. They allow existing infrastructure to operate far more intelligently.
Activation requires partnership
The energy transition ultimately unfolds through collaboration. Regulation provides the institutional framework. Technology provides the tools. But trust and partnership determine the speed at which ideas move from concept to implementation.
Public institutions, private industry, and civil society must operate together, forming what could be described as the choreography of the transition. Innovation rarely emerges in isolation.
Flipping the switch
The design phase of the energy transition is largely behind us. We understand science. We possess many of the technologies. We have built regulatory frameworks that guide capital and innovation.
The question that now defines this decade is not whether the transition will happen. The question is how quickly we can activate it. District energy systems, industrial innovation clusters, and digital energy orchestration are already demonstrating what that activation can look like.
The house has largely been wired. Now it is time to flip the switch.
