Sure. Maybe I'll start with the export side of it.
We know that some of the international markets that don't have the ability to pursue renewable electricity to the same extent as others are looking at hydrogen and ammonia for, let's say, power generation. Japan has been very explicit about that. The Japanese have been targeting certain countries, Canada being one of them, that they feel have an opportunity to supply them with that energy resource, whether it's in the form of hydrogen or ammonia. However, they're also very clear to say, “We're certainly looking for you, Canada, to work together on that to get your product to market.”
That represents one of the challenges. We can produce at very low cost and we can do it in a low-carbon manner as well, but it's also, as I mentioned, the challenge of moving it to the market and how we do that in a coordinated fashion.
On innovation, a wide range of innovations are going on in western Canada, whether it's carbon capture technology and some of the work going on.... I just came back from a couple of trade conferences in the Middle East and it's clear that we are significantly ahead in areas such as carbon capture and storage, with projects that have been going on for over six years now and storing over one million tonnes per year per project. The world is looking at us.
There are many other areas as well, next-generation production technologies that we're supporting here through some of the funding mechanisms provincially and federally that are looking to actually scale it up right in our backyard. We have the right attributes, the talent and the economic conditions for that. Then there are projects through which we can actually use hydrogen in different manners. We have a blending project starting that will be led by ATCO very soon—later this year or early next year—to inject a certain amount of hydrogen. The world will be watching those projects as well, and our experts who can understand the performance of these technologies in terms of, for example, what some of the metallurgical issues are around blending hydrogen and natural gas.
We have expertise; we have the pilot projects, and again, the world seems to be watching us very closely right now.