Show notes
Holly Brown and Nathan Killeen from Hatch join the show to discuss how the company is tackling some of the most difficult energy issues. Their team works to bring renewable energy to remote areas, often working with First Nation's communities to create an energy system that works for them. Engineers with a global focus, the Hatch team helps to create renewable energy projects that benefit communities of all sizes.
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Allen Hall: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I'm your host, Allen Hall, along with my co host, Joel Saxum. Today, we're diving into the renewable energy initiatives of Hatch, a global engineering powerhouse that's been shaping industries for nearly seven decades. While Hatch is known for its wide ranging expertise in metals, minerals, And infrastructure will be shining a spotlight on their cutting edge work in the renewable energy sector, from solar farms to wind turbines and battery storage, Hatch is at the forefront of the clean energy revolution.
We'll explore how this employee owned company is leveraging its vast engineering experience to tackle the complex challenges of transitioning to sustainable, sustainable, And in this episode, we'll discuss Hatch's projects with First Nation communities in Canada and how they're helping communities around the world access cleaner, more reliable energy.
Our guests are Nathan Colleen, Wind Power Lead at Hatch and Holly Brown, Senior Environmental Consultant at Hatch. Nathan and Holly, welcome to the show.
Holly Brown: Thank you, Allen.
Nathan Killeen: Very nice to be here.
Allen Hall: First off, I think we should introduce people that are not familiar to hatch to all the thing that Hatch does. And if you haven't been on the website, you should go check it out.
It's hatch.com. But Holly, you want to give some description of all the things that Hatch. Does do.
Holly Brown: At Hatch we refer to ourselves as entrepreneurs with a technical soul. So what that means is we're really a group of people who are passionately committed to the pursuit of a better world through positive change. So I think a unique differentiator for Hatch is that we embrace our client's vision as our own, and we partner with clients to develop ideas that are smarter, more efficient, and innovative.
We have a global professional network of over 10, 000 people. We're in about 150 different countries all over the globe, and we have three primary sectors that we work in, and that's metals and mining, energy and infrastructure. We're unique in the sense that we're employee owned and independent, which means we're free to bring our best thinking to our clients business needs, and our exceptional diverse teams combine not only the vast engineering and business knowledge, but we work in close partnerships with our clients to develop.
market strategies, manage and optimize production for their businesses, and really develop new game changing technologies for design and deliver of complex capital projects. I think in summary, we tackle the tough, right? So we provide holistic solutions in this space. Another key portion of that we'll talk about later on is the community engagement and social performance.
Directly working with the First Nations and indigenous communities that's their land and we want to make sure that we deliver the project, not only to our clients needs, but also to the local communities and that'll create lasting success for the project in general. Our. Exceptional diverse teams include technical entrepreneurs and technical solutions to our client's challenges.
And so those optimized practices across environmental protection economic prosperity, social justice, as I mentioned before, and cultural vibrancy. So we really want businesses and the ecosystems and the communities to thrive both now and into the future on our projects.
Allen Hall: Yeah, and I want to get to some of the projects you're doing, but I think being in renewables, you have firsthand experience, both of you, of some of the complexities that are involved there. And I know when we had talked previously, we're talking about a specific project that was pretty complicated. So that's where I want to pick both of your brains today about renewable projects and getting out to some more remote places.
And how Hatch has evolved that way, and maybe, can we have Nathan describe what's happening with First Nations and the work that Hatch is doing there?
Nathan Killeen: And what we're doing with some of these First Nations, multiple First Nations These are very tough environments. A lot of the, these communities are remote.
They're dependent on diesel gen sets. Fuel is very expensive. It's, it's a fluctuating commodity. So a lot of these projects are the incorporation of, energy storage, solar and wind. And the project that we're going to speaking about today combines all three. And obviously, this helps on multiple fronts.
It's, it's obviously the people. The nations that we're working with, this is their land, their environment. It's their, it's a sense of ownership. It's a sense of independence that we're working with them, beyond just the, first principles of saving money and helping the environment.
It's also the empowerment that this gives these people's, In the in multiple locations, it's not only, obviously there's the difficulties of dealing in these environments. You have limited construction schedules, you're integrating different technologies.
So one of the things that we really. Emphasizes, we have a micro grid solution and we're able to tie these things together. So it's just as, Holly said, it's we're working with the communities, to provide them that energy independence that they're looking for.
Joel Saxum: So these projects like they like something like this in the Northwest territories it's a renewable development project.
While it may not be a. 200, 300 megawatt project. It is a project on steroids, right? Because you're dealing with so many complications, logistics, complications stakeholder complications, there's just so much involved in it. And that's where patch thrives, right? Because you guys can, it's a one stop shop.
You come in, you have the technical expertise, you have environmental expertise, you have the civil expertise. Like it's all there.
Nathan Killeen: Can we do the turnkey projects? Absolutely. We're there, we can do standard solar front end design, owners, engineering, independent engineering, but where we really excel is these multifaceted projects that are, Harsh environments, technically difficult, we have a great stakeholder engagement, a great relationship with these communities.
It's a project on steroids. There's not many companies, consulting companies that can execute to the level that we can, because we understand this area. We have good engagement with the communities and we're really, I think we like to tackle the tough.
Joel Saxum: Yeah. Yeah. I'll give you two, two, two examples, like for the listeners here of my, from my network of.
Working in remote Canada. I worked in oil and gas exploration, right? So Nuiqsut, those kinds of places. Like I've been there in the winter time and just getting food there for the crew, it takes dedicated personnel. The other one I like to say a lot is I have a really good friend. His name's Joe Welter, a great civil engineer.
But he worked for a company for six or eight years and they built hockey rinks. That's what they did. That's they traveled all over the world, building hockey rinks. And they did a ton of them fly in hockey rink building in Northern Canada. Like in these remote places and the stories he would tell about, not only are we fighting logistics and getting materials and stuff here, but we're also fighting like bears off.
And then, and he said, there's nowhere to you got a crew here building stuff and these kinds of things, there's nowhere to stay. You're sleeping in some kid's bedroom. Like he's done that before. These are, those are really out there problems, but.
You guys having that knowledge and knowing how to work within these situations really brings a lot of value to the client as well. Yeah, we have an entire division related to bear mitigation, that's,
Nathan Killeen: you mean
Joel Saxum: Those are problems we don't deal with in of, developing a wind farm in Texas.
You don't have to worry about bears taking people out.
Nathan Killeen: Yeah, I think the most I ever had to contend with, working on wind farms in Iowa was maybe the occasional white tailed deer at about, three or four hundred yards,
Joel Saxum: not very voracious.
Allen Hall: I was involved with a project on the airplane side of modifying airplanes to haul diesel fuel.
Up to the Northwest Territories and the Canadian government was involved in that. And at the time, I just remember thinking, we're hauling like maybe 50 gallons of diesel fuel out to these remote areas. How expensive that was. It was crazy expensive. So it makes sense now for those remote areas to get a hold of Hatch.
And to put in a wind and a solar and a battery storage system to get the dependency off diesel fuel and lower the cost. I think everybody misses how much
Joel Saxum: cost that is. Yeah, when you factor the logistics in of diesel fuel for a genset in Northwest Territories,