Jon Liedtke joins 610 CKTB’s Gene Valaitis for his weekly segment, Liedtke Has a Take!
Canada’s power grid is vulnerable for blackouts during intense summer heat waves. We discuss how rigid green policies, the rapid adoption of heat pumps, and the massive cooling demands of expanding AI data centers create a dystopian threat of systemic grid failure.
Transcript (Gemini Generated):
Gene Valaitis: It’s time for Liedtke Has a Take with Jon Liedtke. Good morning, Jon.
Jon Liedtke: Good morning, Gene.
Gene Valaitis: Well, Europe is going through one heck of a heat wave. Record-smashing highs around 45 degrees Celsius, which is 112 degrees Fahrenheit. Now, Jon, you picked up on this, and this is going to be an interesting take from you this morning. We’re seeing a very bizarre situation in Europe where record heat waves are forcing nuclear plants to actually shut down due to environmental rules, and now they’re turning on fossil fuel gas plants to keep what air conditioning they have running. Now, how did they get trapped into this really weird grid paradox?
Jon Liedtke: This is peak European climate irony, Gene. But first, when you’ve got your special guest on, opposition leader Poilievre, please ask him how important air conditioning is for Canadians. And I mean that like very legitimately because I think this is a very serious topic. We’ve got a historic heat wave happening right now, spiking demand in Europe. And when they need their emissions-free nuclear power the most, bureaucratic environmental regulations have forced those plants to throttle down by over 4 gigawatts. Now, that’s enough juice to power three Back to the Future time machines, to put it into pop culture parlance. But the only reason this is actually happening is because the river cooling waters have gotten too warm for fish, according to the regulations. So, what’s the fix for that? They fired up the fossil fuel plants that they don’t want to have to run at all, that they’ve been trying to phase out. And as a result of that, power prices have gone through the roof. But look, this is what happens when progressive policy models ignore basic laws of thermodynamics. You’ve got a rigid ideology that’s colliding with brutal physics, and the grid that you want to build or impose through bureaucratic regulation, it’s going to lose every time to nature.
Gene Valaitis: Yeah, you know, I’ve always said, and this is just my personal opinion, if you’re going to have heat, you know, in the winter, you should probably have air conditioning in the summer. But Europe has historically had this really weird anti-AC dogma. They view air conditioning as this unnecessary American luxury. Do you think this brutal reality—temperatures at 112 Fahrenheit—is going to shatter that mindset?
Jon Liedtke: Oh yeah, absolutely, Gene. Look, for decades, European elites have looked down their noses at air conditioning. They dismiss it as some tacky American luxury that ruins historic aesthetics. And it’s even to the extent that I think it was the Swiss Olympic team blamed their loss a couple of years ago on the air conditioning in their hotel rooms, and this time—or the World Cup, excuse me. And this time around, they’re not using air conditioning when they’re in America. I mean, it’s nonsense. It’s just this mindset is pervasive. But bureaucrats have buried installing air conditioning under so much red tape across the European Union that it’s practically illegal for some citizens, and when I say some, I mean millions, to even get a unit installed. But reality is a brutal teacher, Gene. When the temperature hits, you know, 44 degrees like it did in France a couple days ago in some regions, AC stops being a luxury or an ideological pursuit, and it becomes a baseline survival instinct. There’s even green politicians now who have spent years mocking this technology who are quietly backtracking, albeit through media. And then there are even populists who are capitalizing on the frustration with putting forward massive spending promises for air conditioning for homeowners. So, ideology is cracking because people have quite literally found themselves baking in their own living rooms.
Gene Valaitis: Yeah, the climate change bedwetters. Now, you’ve mentioned that the battle over air conditioning in Canada won’t be an outright ban, but rather what you term “soft control.” So, what does that mean for the average homeowner, their electricity bill, or their thermostat?
Jon Liedtke: Yeah, I don’t think they’re going to explicitly ban it here, Gene. That would be a political suicide pact, especially after we’ve seen heat waves that have reframed cooling as a fundamental public health necessity across this country. But I mean, instead, we’ve got to look past these ideological ideas and try to get to what the actual fact is that matters to people: that they’re sweating over their own hydro bill. So, the real issue is that we’re walking into an unintended policy trap. The feds and the provinces are aggressively subsidizing heat pumps to force homes off natural gas. But the catch is that a heat pump is literally just a central air conditioner that can run in reverse. By mandating these units or by incentivizing them for winter green targets, bureaucrats are accidentally injecting massive summer cooling capacity into millions of Canadian homes that never have had it before. So, we’re supercharging a summer grid demand while pretending that we’re shrinking our carbon footprint, which is why I think we’re seeing these new aggressive power targets. We’ve seen nuclear timelines like over the past couple days, and that’s why I think why.
Gene Valaitis: Now, there’s a massive new player straining our grid that people aren’t talking about enough. That is artificial intelligence and data centers. Well, there was a huge town hall meeting in Hamilton—what was it, two, three weeks ago—because a developer wanted to do exactly that, put a big AI and data center in near the lake in Hamilton. Like, hundreds of people came out to a town hall meeting, and Hamilton City Council said, “Well, okay, that ain’t going to happen.” So, when a severe summer heat wave hits in the future, with artificial intelligence growing and growing every day, who do you think is going to win the power struggle? My living room or the tech giants?
Jon Liedtke: [Laughs] This is the massive elephant in the room, Gene, that politicians are desperately trying to ignore or get you to think of other things about. The real strain isn’t, of course, your residential AC against the green mandates; it’s the living room versus Silicon Valley. And the AI and the data centers, they’re power-hungry monsters, and they require gargantuan amounts of continuous electricity and nonstop cooling just to avoid a meltdown. But I think of here in Windsor, if it came down to keeping Chrysler open or it came down to making sure that the air conditioning is on for all of the residents in the city, I don’t know how that choice would be made, or if it’s even possible to decide to allocate electricity in that type of a way. But at the end of the day, I mean, we just saw in Ottawa, the local hydro utility warned that a new data center request equaled almost 90% of the city’s average usage.
Gene Valaitis: Wow.
Jon Liedtke: And we’re seeing those types of stories city after city after city. So, when a severe heat wave does hit, utilities are going to face a brutal, dystopian choice. Do we keep the—I guess like, how do you choose? What stays up, or do you have to let it all go down once you reach that peak? Because I remember brownouts, you know, of 20, 25 years ago, and they requested that you stop using it, but I don’t think they were able to just shut it off until it blew up.
Gene Valaitis: Yeah. Well, Alex, our meteorologist here, tells me that next week is going to be super hot and really humid, which I hate, but I do have air conditioning. But you’ve said that when rigid climate policy collides with brutal human physics, the grid always loses. So, what’s the ultimate wake-up call for Canada’s energy planners?
Jon Liedtke: This is the thing, the math does not add up, Gene. We’re trying to phase out reliable baseline power, we’re mandating EVs, we’re transitioning home heating to the electric grid, and we’re feeding insatiable AI infrastructure and data centers, all while expecting a legacy system—and we have to be clear about that, this is a legacy system that was not built for the 2026 that we’re in right now. And we’re expecting it to withstand the extreme weather of 2026 as well. So, the math is not mathing, and we cannot policy our way out of the laws of physics. So, if Canadian energy planners don’t inject immediate grid realism into these aggressive performative timelines that we’re looking at, the system will eventually buckle, and that’s going to be a very bad thing. No one liked those brownouts of 25 years ago. So, ideology looks great on a whiteboard, and it plays good in soundbites, and it might even get you elected. But when the heat hits, the electrons are going to have to flow, and it’s time to build for reality, not for bureaucratic fantasy models. But hey, this is Canada. We love our bureaucratic fantasy models, Gene.
Gene Valaitis: Another great take, Jon Liedtke. Thank you.
Jon Liedtke: Thank you. Stay cool this weekend.
Gene Valaitis: Hey, you too. Turn it down.
Jon Liedtke: All right.
Gene Valaitis: There you go, Jon Liedtke with the Liedtke Take. He’s a good guy.
This aired on 610 CKTB
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