Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Tamlyn Shimizu: Welcome to Smart in the City, the BABLE podcast, where we bring together top actors in the smart city arena, sparking dialogues and interactions around the stakeholders and themes most prevalent for today's citizens and tomorrow's generations. I am your host, Tamlyn Shimizu, and I hope you'll enjoy this episode and gain knowledge and connections to accelerate the change for a better urban life.
Welcome back, everyone. Nice for you to be listening to another episode of Smart in the City. In this ongoing series, we are featuring mayors and deputy mayors, mayors leaders from small and large communities alike. And for this episode, we are headed to the other side of the Atlantic, but to the cousin of the north, Canada. And I actually believe that this is the first episode we have done with a Canadian guest.
And you know that I always think that that makes it an extra special episode if we have a first from a new country. I think this episode might surprise you as well. How do you think the smallest communities can make the biggest impacts is the question. And what does innovation mean for a small Canadian city doing way bigger projects?
To answer that is none other than the mayor of Stephenville, Canada. So please give a warm welcome to Tom Rose. Welcome, Tom.
[00:01:22] Tom Rose: Thank you very much. Thanks for having me.
[00:01:24] Tamlyn Shimizu: It's absolutely our pleasure. I'm really excited about the first Canadian episode. I can't believe actually we haven't done a Canadian episode, but I'm excited for it.
I think everyone's going to really love the stories you'll have to tell. Also, from our first conversation, there's some exciting things happening for a small town.
I'd like to get us warmed up a little bit before we jump into some of the bigger questions. The question to get us warmed up that I've brought for you today is very Canadian focused. I needed to get something that was very Canadian, and the most Canadian thing I could think of was poutine.
So I want to ask you, if Stephenville were a type of poutine, what would be on top?
[00:02:12] Tom Rose: That's a very good question. And, you know, it's really a toss up. When I look at our culture, obviously Canadian poutine, that is so important to our culture and people love it, but people like to kind of, you know, bring up the flavor a little bit. So if I were to pick two choices, one maybe for seafood lovers, because we have some of the best lobster in the world, our waters are so cold around 10,000 miles of coastline that I would say lobster pieces on top of poutine would be a really good one. And the other one is we have the largest density of moose in North America. So we have about 100,000 moose on our province. And a lot of people use it for sustenance food. But moose burger on top of the poutine would be right up there with meat lovers.
[00:03:08] Tamlyn Shimizu: All right, sounds very Canadian.
Good choices. So I want to learn more about you first as well, Tom, about your background. I know you've done a variety of different things in your life. Tell us all about that and what led you into your role today.
[00:03:26] Tom Rose: Yeah. Okay. So I'm born and raised in Stephenville, Newfoundland, and very proud to be a Canadian and a Newfoundlander and a Stephenville boy. A little history, I guess, why I ended up as the mayor of Stephenville in 1952. My grandfather, Tom Rose, who I was named after, was Stephenville's first mayor.
And I guess that was in the DNA and the lineage. And I became, eight years ago, I became Stephen Bull's second Tom Rose as mayor. So I came from a background where we did a lot of farming and forestry and work, stuff like that. So I spent a lot of time on the land, and I love the outdoors. I'm an outdoors person.
And I remember, I guess, my first significant move. When I think back about my career. In 1986, I planted 13,000 red pines from seedlings, and today they're on my property, and they're sizable for commercial harvest. And I do have a small sawmill. And so I mill my own lumber and build my own properties and stuff like that. And when I think back, that's something I did for the environment. You know, those 13,000 red pines were important as deciduous and coniferous forests play a critical role on our planet.
But when I jump a little bit further, my son is an environmental scientist, and I get educated quite a bit by my son, and I'm very fortunate for that. But. But since I become the mayor, I've really had a focus on net zero innovation and doing everything possible to find efficiencies with innovation so we can minimize our carbon output and seek the glory of trying to become net zero and become as smart and as innovative as we can be.
[00:05:37] Tamlyn Shimizu: It's a really interesting background. I want to set the scene a little bit more for what Stephenville is.
Can you tell us where is Stephenville exactly, and what makes up kind of its unique DNA?
[00:05:53] Tom Rose: Yeah. So we're the most eastern province in Canada, but we're on the west coast of the province, and we have a local saying within our communities. West coast, best coast. So Stephenville was a large US Air Force base from 1941 to 1966 and it played a pivotal role on the infrastructure in Stephenville.
One of the most critical pieces of infrastructure that got built here was a world class ICAO class airport and industrial deep water port facility and they're actually connected. And in all of North America there's only two places that got that intermodal capacity. One would be on the west coast of North America, Seattle, Washington and the other would be stephenvolt.
We're not that busy economically and industrial wise we're a catchment area of 25,000 people. The core little town is about 7,000 people.
We have a beautiful microclimate here. We have all seasons and we're still coming out of winter. Just want to say that. But we, we have very high ceilings, very a lot of blue skies. So winter sports are big here, summer sports are big but the fall is so significant. We have just in about an hour and a half drive of Stephenville we have nine Atlantic salmon rivers and we are known as the Mecca of salmon rivers in North America. You know, so our lifestyle for outdoors people.
But in Stephenville we really focus on reducing our carbon and we have no big industries, no big polluters and world energy. GH2 two years ago announced with the German chancellor from Germany and Stephen Vonfeland on August 23rd, 2022 that a planned 4 gigawatt wind hydrogen project would start produce ammonia to be sent to Hamburg, Germany and that's in play. There's been some delays on offtakes and scalability of the project but it's still in play. And it's interesting Tamlin that 25 years ago we used to have a pulp and paper mill here that was producing carbon and we were shipping newsprint to Hamburg. Now the plan is to go from hydrogen to ammonia to ship to Hamburg but this hydrogen plant would be zero emissions. So we're really moving towards green innovation on an energy side. But we do a lot of things in Stephenville that are green from large size to medium sized to very small size and I think you leave no stone unturned. And when we sit at our council and we work and we set policy and we work on projects, we always look for a green checkbox and if it's not there, we try to find one to put there.
[00:09:20] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah, big ambitions. I also have to say I was originally born in California. We also say west coast, best coast. So I concur there.
I want to dig a little bit more into this project that you mentioned, this wind to hydrogen project.
Can you walk us through in a bit more detail around what the vision is, the progress and what this project could mean for the global green energy trade.
[00:09:50] Tom Rose: Yeah, absolutely. And it is truly global, this project. So we are very fortunate. And you know I grew up in Stephenville and you know we dry clothes on our lines here, we don't use dryers a whole lot because we have a lot of wind. But I never realized until this project came to fruition I guess that according to the Danes who hold a lot of the portals, I guess and the data and the assays about wind nominals on the planet that we have the best wind corridor in North America.
And this project is planned to put 600 large scale turbines in and around Stephenville.
And normally to get really good winds you have to be offshore for laminate winds and so forth. But our wind DNA will give us top notch wind profiles. And from a capex and an OPEX on a, you know, a 4 to 10 billion dollar project, the better the wind, the better the return on investment. So the plan is to produce 600 massive wind turbines, produce 4 gigawatts of power and to provide green, 100% green energy for industries that will be attracted to Stephenville. So what the initial one, you know, with the German Chancellor who flew in with, we had 25 of Germany's top CEOs in Stephenville for that signing. It was such a signature, I'll never forget it, you know, shaking hands with German Chancellor Schultz and it was a big day. But we have other industries now that are looking at Stephen Bull and they're looking at Stephenville because of a bunch of checkboxes and I'd just like to touch on a couple.
So Canada being a G7 like Germany and France and the other G7s were a very stable geopolitical place for investment.
So that's a good thing.
Stephenville has great adjacency to massive markets. So massive markets would be the European market, also the North American market.
And we have the closest ice free port, the port of Stephenville to the Northwest Passage.
And they say that the tonnage is growing on the Northwest Passage for moving goods and services that instead of going to the Panama Canal you can save 8,000 km of travel which is a significant savings. And as global warming is happening, unfortun the Northwest Passage is opening up every year. So they're talking about sustainable aviation fuel refineries for Stephenville. They're talking about a million square foot AI data campus center for Stephenville and it's pretty exciting times. Now we don't have final investment decision and that takes time, especially now. There's a little bit of a shakeup in the global markets right now and hopefully that'll settle down in time. But we're pretty excited. We got a great place to do business, great lifestyle. And I've always said, Tamlin, that in order to attract a company, because to attract a company, a company got to attract people.
A job is only 50% of the equation. It's the lifestyle and it's the clean, green, inclusive everything that's so important to draw families to work or in stay. So we work on a lot of, a lot of things. We even provide green energy grants for our community groups like our cross country skiing and our golf courses just to try to get them to net zero. Because that's what smart towns and smart cities do from a technology perspective.
[00:14:04] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah, absolutely. I think for everyone listening, watch this space is what he's saying. Essentially, Stephenville is the next up and coming, really global player that you don't expect when you're talking about green and green energy. I want to also take a step back, Tom, on you really have this ambition, a big vision for Stephenville to become the greenest town in Canada. And it's small, but what do you think it really takes politically, socially, economically to push a town like yours toward net zero?
[00:14:45] Tom Rose: I think the biggest thing, I may have a vision in my council, but it starts with education and I think our educational systems from, from, you know, from pre kindergarten all the way up, they will make the change and ensure that our planet, our towns, our cities get better at becoming innovative towards green. But I remember a year between, a year and two years ago, I was in Hamburg, Germany with World Energy CEOs and we were sitting down for dinner and John Risley said to me, he said, mayor Rose, together we're going to make Stephenville the greenest city town in all of Canada. And that stuck with me because this project is so global. And I've often said, Tamlin, that I'm very proud, by the way, to say that Stephenville has become a global asset on this green energy. Like we're talking 10 gigawatts, which is very, very significant just in our area.
And at the end of the day, we have a lot of infrastructure over Canada, good weather, ports, airports, all that stuff. But at the end of the day, if we did not have the best wind corridor in North America, we probably wouldn't be having this podcast.
[00:16:19] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah, absolutely. I think when we first talked, I really didn't expect that much from Stephenville. And I was really surprised when we had our first conversation. And I think this really exemplifies why we need to include all different sizes of places into the discussion.
So I think that's really important to note.
You also mentioned your passion for innovation and how that can support your climate goals. I was wondering if you could maybe dig in a bit deeper to an innovative project that you've been a part of or that you're working towards. And what do you think are the factors for success in innovation projects?
[00:17:04] Tom Rose: Yeah, so great commitment on all levels of government is critical. Like in our country, we have the federal, provincial, municipal government.
That's critical.
But we have a really good management team. And I sometimes do a mix of demographics that I get a lot of young guns, but a little bit of, you know, gray hair at the top too. And combined they educate each other, but they become a greater team. So I'll give you a couple of examples of. I think I'm pretty excited about. So the first one is we have the largest reed bed, green reed bed system, and we treat our effluent in Stephenville, Newfoundland, and it's so successful that we're in the process now of expanding it with a $10 million upgrade towards that wetland system so our population can double. But it's so successful that we accrue carbon credits on our effluent system. So that's innovation at its best, you know, And. And just recently, another one that we jumped in is we were selected as the first town or city in Canada. I love being first. Sometimes I'm just. I love to be able to gate first. But I'm a. I'm passionate, I'm a leader, I'm an innovator. You know, I support all that stuff. But the Japanese space station, and there's a software developed out of an Italian company called Astera, and that software company actually identified water on Mars.
So we jumped in, made a sizable investment.
We had the little town of Steve Malnoufaland scanned by the Japanese space station 12 or 18 kilometers above the planet. And they identified every single leak in our storm drainage, water and sewer. And it was so accurate, it could tell us, is it storm drainage? Is it potable water, Is it sewer? So what it allowed us to do, that's. It's amazing.
[00:19:28] Tamlyn Shimizu: It's cool.
[00:19:29] Tom Rose: What it allowed us to do it is we triaged and we identified all of our leaks so efficiently with our public works department that it actually saved us electricity costs, it saved us money. And it was the perfect example of what Innovation is.
[00:19:50] Tamlyn Shimizu: I love those examples. They're really amazing, really innovative, really forward thinking, really shows the possibilities of what's to come.
I mean, I feel like this, the question that I wanted to ask you now, I feel like it's a little bit redundant, honestly. But you know, some people still might criticize that. Okay, yes, but we need to concentrate on the big cities of the world and decarbonizing there first. You know, like this is the priority or something along those lines. How do you respond to that and what makes you think stephenville important enough to be talking right now?
[00:20:30] Tom Rose: Yeah, yeah, and that's a good one. You know, there's, there's always criticism that comes for new innovation and new ways to do, to do things.
[00:20:44] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah.
[00:20:44] Tom Rose: And you know, fossil fuels, we have a very low carbon fossil fuel in our offshore and that's part of our gdp.
And, and it's interesting, we're a small province, Tamlin.
We're 500,000 people.
Germany, I believe, has 80 plus million.
So we have about two people per square kilometer, where in Germany you'd have about 130 people per square kilometer. So we have a lot of vastness. And.
But there's some companies out there and some individuals still believe that, okay, this is global warming is not happening and this green energy revolution is not right. And we've heard, you know, from political leaders, drill, baby, drill in the, in the international, global arena. But at the end of the day is, you know, that that era of fossil fuels carried us for 100 years and it'll still carry us for another hundred years.
But the green energy revolution, the ability to use everything from wind to solar to tidal power to all the innovations that, and there's probably somebody working on something today, Tamlin, in some lab in some academic university throughout the globe that can find a better way for us to fine our energy and minimize the carbon footprint. So, you know, it's.
But it's education. At the end of the day, it's all about education and having people informed about why the things that we're doing in Stephenville is right. And we got a very proud town of what we're doing and I'm just very proud to be the mayor and representing the good citizens of my town.
[00:22:44] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah, I love that. Tom, really good message out there and I like the piece about education too, that you're hitting home. So really good message there. What do you think are the biggest bottlenecks for Stephenville to actually accomplish? Becoming the greenest town in Canada, for example, could be anything, like funding staff Knowledge, anything along those lines.
[00:23:10] Tom Rose: I think the biggest stumbling block that could stop a town like Stephen Bull or any other town on the globe is the geopolitical climate that exists and the lack of great leadership from the top. So we have a strong government in place now in Canada that really is focused on innovation and green and balancing all of our other, you know, energy sectors. And there's got to be a balance for me, attracting people to Stephenville. And I've had that question at me so many times because, you know, we anticipate our population is going to double with one investment decision being made.
But Steamville is a great place. Canada is a great place to live, and there's a lot of great places in the world to live. And I haven't seen all of the world, but I hope to get to see as much as I can. But I think the biggest thing is driving it from the political agenda down.
[00:24:23] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah, yeah. Always a bit of a struggle. It's hard when I get that answer honestly, because I think, oh, gosh, that's something we have little control of as people. We can vote, of course, in our own elections, we can advocate for things on different levels, but it kind of also takes the power out of our hands, this geopolitical situation, et cetera. So what do you think we can tell people who really want to make a change, but that are very concerned about these geopolitical issues?
[00:25:03] Tom Rose: Well, you know, the success that we have seen, Tamlin and I had mentioned, you know, we have this big global project in play, but I also mentioned some of our small medium projects. And I think the secret is that even at a period of time, if there's not great political support from a different level of government, that's okay, because you can do it on your own, you can take on projects on your own, and you can find your capital and your human resources to get those projects going. Because when those projects succeed, that becomes a driver, both from a public relations perspective and it could help affect change down line. So I think never give up on your passion for, you know.
[00:25:56] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah, really, really good message there.
And you've got the opportunity to become a leader, to lead your town and lead these ambitions. So what do you think is the best advice you can give someone about leadership?
[00:26:15] Tom Rose: Well, you know, leadership has to have a lot of traits.
You have to be passionate, you have to be a great listener. You have to listen and weigh out the pros and cons.
When we listen to our management team as a council, or we listen to our citizens, or we listen to A primary school class, what's important to them, you know, So I think you have to listen to the full range of demographics.
But the traits of a leader is, here's when I finish my term as the mayor of the great town of Stephenville, I want to be able to look back and say, it's better now because often political leaders get elected and they're not focused on what's their legacy they're leaving behind. And if you can leave a legacy that's going to benefit children, seniors, adults, the environment.
And at the end of the day, as my son said, dad, he said, if we don't take care of the environment, the environment will take care of us.
[00:27:40] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah, yeah, very true. I also like to ask the question on here, what's the worst piece of advice you've received either about leadership or otherwise?
[00:27:56] Tom Rose: Okay, that's a really good question. So, you know, I remember I had a political individual tried to give me political advice and I often think back on what the individual said to me and I thought, wow, I'm never taking that advice because that was the worst piece of advice I have ever received.
And I always believed in this town. It had so much ability to grow. And I never thought we'd become a global asset like we are now, but I'm so delighted. But he said, you know, why don't we just focus on becoming a retirement town?
And when I think back, I said, stephen Land with all of this infrastructure and we're going to become a retirement path. Not on my watch. You know, not that I'm not looking forward to retiring and having a great. But that's one of the things too that we do in good policy is you leave nobody behind.
You take care of all of your citizens, Leave nobody behind.
[00:29:12] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah, good message. Yes, stephenville, a place for retirees, but also for innovation and green projects, right?
[00:29:19] Tom Rose: Yes.
[00:29:20] Tamlyn Shimizu: Good.
Yeah, you can have it all. Basically.
Now we're getting to the end of our main interview part and we touched on a lot of things, but I know you also have maybe more that you'd like to expand upon. So I like to give you this space if you'd like to take it the open floor in case you do have anything that we didn't get the chance yet to mention but you think is really important for the listeners to know.
[00:29:52] Tom Rose: I think collaboration and, and I did look at some of the programs. So with Horizon and we have, as a small community, like I traveled to Delft in the Netherlands and they have a school where wind turbine technician program was being offered We've been to, we partnered on a cultural exchange with the European Commission with Saint Germain en Laye, a suburb of Paris.
But I feel that what's happening in Stephenville, in Stephenville, Newfoundland, Canada that a collaborative partnership with a hamlet out of Germany that has a very green innovative approach.
A training facility in Delft, our Memorial University of Newfoundland Labrador, which has a phenomenal innovative engineering faculty World Energy as a corporate leader on green energy. They actually have a blue hydrogen sustainable aviation fuel refinery in Santa Barbara, California.
I think if we can collaborate and bring these sectors together, this global reach together, we're going to learn from each other. But at the end of the day our projects will have a greater chance of success than if we stand alone.
[00:31:32] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah, perfect. Perfect way to end off this, this main part of our interview. So now I take us into our segment. The segment that we have for you today is called Hot take of the Day where we want to hear an opinion of yours that might be slightly controversial or debate it. Do you have a hot take for us today, Tom?
[00:31:54] Tom Rose: Yeah, I think would be the energy sector and we feel it in Canada because we have a lot of oil and gas reserves, LNG potential pipeline, wind, hydrogen, I guess that one to navigate so strategic from all levels of government to ensure that all sectors in our country, all of our provinces and territories feel that what they have and their impact on GDP for the country is taken seriously. But every sector and whether it's from farming to wind to hydrogen to oil and gas to aerospace, every sector must look at innovation and must look at innovation towards minimizing carbon and decarbonizing this planet will help everybody and it'll be we often say I'm an indigenous mayor, I'm a member of first nations in Canada and we often talk about seven generations to come.
So when you make decisions just don't have a short term outlook of where this project can take your citizens. Always look at seven generations to come.
[00:33:34] Tamlyn Shimizu: Seven generations to come.
Yeah, I haven't thought of it like that before so thanks for also making me reflect on that a bit more. I always talk about the next generation, but not seven generations. So I really like that outlook as well. Now we come to our final question. Unfortunately I really enjoyed talking to you, but it's the final question of this interview. It's the question we ask every single guest and it is to you what is a smart city?
[00:34:09] Tom Rose: A smart city is the educational levels of your citizens. They often say that education, an infrastructure will separate a developed to an undeveloped nation.
So to become smart and innovative and trend setting and global.
You have to have education to support to become a smart city. And that's why I focused a little bit on the education of from primary schools to post secondary to the highest levels of academia.
That's where we need to be. And I really feel confident that globally there's a lot of great things happening, Tamlin, you know, and in so many countries around the world. And I had a chance to spend a little bit of time in Europe on the business side of things. I've often traveled there on vacation side of things, which I absolutely love. But I'm looking forward to getting back over and starting a collaboration with projects to make their towns and cities and our town in Stephenville better for seven generations to come.
[00:35:40] Tamlyn Shimizu: Great last words, Tom. With that I just have to give you a big thank you for your time, for sharing all your insights, your knowledge and your thoughts on all of these very, very important topics this next seven generations to come. Thank you so much, Tom.
[00:35:57] Tom Rose: Okay, thank you very much, Tamlin.
[00:36:00] Tamlyn Shimizu: Of course, thank you to all of our listeners. Wouldn't happen without you either. So don't forget you can always create a free account on BABLE SmartCities EU. You can find out more about smart city projects, solutions, implementations and more. Thank you very much.
